LIBRARY Ur LUNbRtdb. 

UNITED STATES OF A3IERICA. 




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Life in Other Worlds: 

INCLUDING A BRIEF STATEMENT 

OF THE 

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF LIFE 
IN OUR WORLD. 



BY 

Adam Miller, M. D. 



WITH AN APPENDIX OF THREE SERMONS, 
Rev. Hi W. Thomas, D. D. 



" It is not vulgar curiosity or idle fancy that suggests the possibility of 
life in other worlds."— B, A. Proctor. 

"More worlds than one— the creed of the Philosopher and the hope of 
the Christian."— Sir David Brewster. 



m 






CHICAGO: 
FOX, COLE & CO., PUBLISHERS. 

1878. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by 

ADAM MILLER, M L\, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



OF £3S 

WASHINGTON 



C. E. SOUTHAKD, 

PRINTER, 

175 Monroe Street, Chicago. 



PREFACE. 



The following pages were written at intervals, be- 
tween professional engagements, and not originally 
intended for publication. Having, however, derived 
much pleasure and comfort in tracing the designing 
hand of an infinitely wise and almighty Creator in 
the land prepared for our race, and then looking out 
upon the great universe containing millions of worlds, 
all under the same great Father's care, I have thought 
others might also take an interest in looking at more 
worlds than one. 

For want of space in this volume I have been com- 
pelled to abridge my chapters and give only outline 
thoughts on the different subjects named, and hence 
there is frequently an abrupt breaking-off, or appar- 
ent want of connection between different subjects. 

Some theologians and scientists will quite likely take 
exceptions to some of the ideas advanced ; but as this 
is a world of conflicting opinions as well as conflicting 
powers, and complete harmony will only follow upon 
the acquisition of a higher degree of knowledge than 



4 PREFACE. 

has yet fallen to the lot of mortals in our present 
state, we are all liable to err in opinions where we 
lack positive proof; and if, in an earnest search after 
truth, I have fallen into errors, these errors will be- 
come subject-matter for honest criticism, and may be 
set down with the numerous other mistakes made by 
men wiser and more learned than the writer of these 
sketches claims to be. 

By permission I have added three sermons — as 
an appendix — closely connected with the subjects 
treated in this volume. These sermons were preached 
in the regular course in the Centenary M. E. Church, 
in the city of Chicago, by Rev. H. W. Thomas, D. D., 
and published in the Chicago Times. They are pre- 
sented here just as they were delivered from the 
pulpit. 

I am indebted to the beautiful poem, An Epic of 
the Starry Heaven, by Thomas L. Harris, for a num- 
ber of the poetic quotations in this work. 

And now, with a hope that some one who will read 
these pages will find encouragement for a union in the 
great future with friends that have gone before, as well 
as for an acquaintance with the millions of happy 
spirits who have passed through the vale of sorrow 
to their final home, I submit this work to a generous 
public. 

Adam Miller. 
Chicago, June, 1878. 



Life in Other Worlds. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PERPETUATION OF LIFE. 

No created and dependent being can travel back 
through the ages and define the period when an im- 
pulse was first given to material organized forms and 
the phenomena of motion, with all the other attributes 
of life imparted to them. Behind, and anterior to all 
living things, is the great first cause of all life. In 
this direction, our mightiest efforts soon reach their 
utmost boundaries. The finite cannot grasp the in- 
finite ; neither can he trace the living stream to its 
fountain-head, and find the origin of all existing 
things. Materialism seeks causation in some indefin- 
able force, and unfoldment, and progress in evolution. 
But whence is this force derived, which propels mate- 
rial and living entities out of nothing ? Does it ex- 
ist independently in the universe, and is it possessed 
of infinite power ? If so, then this may be that divine 
and intelligent power we are contending for. If it 
is mere force, without intelligence, then we cannot 



6 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

% 

account for the harmony in nature. The advocates of 
evolution do not deny some absolute creations — epochs 
of creative power producing the lower orders out of 
which higher types are evolved. If it is admitted 
that there have been several distinct creations, why 
not more ? Why not distinct creations for especial 
epochs ? If one class or one type of existences re- 
quired a creative process, why not the same for every 
form of existence ? Life, in combination with matter, 
evinces intelligence as a cause; and as the union of 
matter with spirit is beyond the comprehension of 
finite beings, and implies infinite power and intelli- 
gence, we descend from a higher to a lower power when 
we claim for evolution that which belongs to the prov- 
ince of especial creation. The argument runs thus : 
With evolutionists, there is a creative power some- 
where, and, somehow, there have been creations of low 
and imperfect types of life ; and then an inferior power 
produces from these lower creations a higher and en- 
tirely different form of life. It is not the unfoldment 
and perfection of* existing types, but the production 
of new types out of old ones, that evolutionists con- 
tend for. The theory of life evolving from the mole- 
cule, and from it through the various stages, until the 
fully-developed man is produced, is mentioned from the 
fact that there are, naturally, these intermediate steps 
until perfect manhood is reached. 

That the life of man, in all his dignity, and highest 
and best estate, is a progress from minute life germs 
to his full development, is admitted ; but not any more 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 

so now than in his original constitution ; and we have 
no evidence that he was ever in any other form than 
human, so far as his essential existence is concerned, 
save that the atoms of which his material body- 
is formed may have existed in other living forms ; 
but, while so organized, there was no part of the pres- 
ent structure, nor intelligence in any of those living 
forms, through which this matter may have passed. 
Human life can only exist under certain peculiar con- 
ditions, and it is quite probable that the successive 
steps of creation which preceded human life on earth 
were so many steps in preparing those conditions 
where human life could find existence and support. 
But these preparatory processes were not those of 
evolving human beings from lower types. When the 
habitation was formed, and the elements of nature re- 
fined and arranged in their proper position and order, 
to make " the human form divine," then the breath of 
the Infinite Power made this noble structure the abode 
of essential man. If human beings came up through 
the slow process of evolution from these lower types, 
would not these have disappeared when man had been 
evolved out of them ? But we find no evidence of 
change nor progress in any of them. The baboons, 
apes, monkeys, chimpanzees, and all that class of 
animals, manifest the same dispositions through all 
historic time, without improvement in any of their 
habits or manner of life. 

Darwin, in his " Descent of Man," traces our gene- 
alogy as follows : 



8 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

" The early progenitors of man were, no doubt, 
covered with hair, both sexes having beards ; their 
ears were pointed and capable of movement, and their 
bodies were provided with a tail having the proper 
muscles. The foot was prehensible ; and our progeni- 
tors were aboriginal in their habits, frequenting some 
warm forest-clad land. The males were provided with 
formidable canine teeth, which served them as formi- 
dable weapons. At a still later period the progenitors 
of man must have been aquatic in their habits, for 
morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a 
modified swim-bladder, which once served as a float." 

(Vol. I, p. 198.) 

In reply to this, Mr. Peebles says : 

" Physical organization does not create the conscious 
soul ; brain does not secrete the intellect ; scientific 
discoveries and Miltonian poems are not bread and 
beef transmuted by chemical laws ; 'nothing and 
nobodies' are not on the way to intelligent men and 
women ; cold, inert phosphates cannot be developed 
into thought, nor a dead ox into a living epic, aflame 
with truth and beauty. In primitive man lay con- 
cealed future Bacons, Newtons, Humboldts and Em- 
ersons, just as orange groves lie hidden in the orange 
seeds that lie scattered about our yards." 

Progress toward higher conditions is evident through 
the whole realm of nature but in the onward march 
toward completeness; repellent forces are often en- 
countered, and, hence, we have periods of falling back 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 9 

from higher to lower conditions, in organic life as well 
as in our social relations. 

In these cycles of running up and running down of 
the same species of living organisms we have not the 
shadow of proof that one order of animals can pass 
into the other by evolution. All life may be traced 
to its germinal cells ; its progress is sustained by the 
same materials that contribute to the growth of all 
living organisms. Whatever of similarity there may 
appear in the germinal life cells of different animals 
to the advocates of the Darwinian theory of evolution, 
there is, undoubtedly, an impassable gulf between the 
life germ of man and that of the lower animals. 

From the monad to the molecule, as well as from 
the minute life germs, there are certain fixed laws of 
reproduction established by infinite wisdom, moving 
in appointed orbits, up to a full development ; and we 
might as well allow that suns and planets could leave 
their orbits and revolve in other orbits, as to believe 
that the order of progressive development could be 
changed by evolution from lower animals so as to ar- 
rive at the lofty position occupied by man. Our 
microscope and chemistry may fail to detect the differ- 
ence between the minute life germs of man and the 
lower animals, but the progress of inferior animals to 
the perfection of animal life and the unfoldment of 
man from helpless infancy to his high moral nature 
are two very different things. 

The lower order of animals arrive at certain fixed 
boundaries, and over these they cannot pass. The 



10 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

birds, that now charm us with their music sang 
as sweetly in the bowers of Eden or the groves of 
primeval forests as they do now. They construct their 
nests and follow the laws of instinct without variation 
through all ages, and these unchanging characteris- 
tics are found in all other animals. 

Pindarus, a Greek poet, born 522 years before 
Christ, said : 

And the great laws of nature ne'er expire, 

Unchanged the lion's valiant race remains, 

And all his father's wiles the youthful fox retains. 

In the progress of man's physical nature from in- 
fancy to manhood we have a typical representation of 
his moral progress to a higher civilization. 

But history furnishes many melancholy examples of 
retrocession from a high civilization to rude barbar- 
ism. The finger of Time has written on the pages of 
history some fearful lessons of decay and death of 
national greatness. In the upward march the un- 
foldment is gradual, and is an outgrowth of man's 
necessities. At first he may be a Nimrod — a " mighty 
hunter," living by hunting and fishing and upon such 
fruits and nuts as he may find of a spontaneous growth. 
From these 1ow t conditions of social life the progress 
has been gradual; step by step he has gone up : first, 
to the care of domestic animals for food and their skins 
for clothing ; the next steps are, the cultivation of 
the soil, the construction of dwelling places, the use 
of agricultural implements, and the manufacturing of 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 11 

wearing apparel, from the coarse to the fine. Com- 
munities grow into cities, and cities and countries into 
empires, or republics. 

These, in the cycle of years, have again run down 
to low conditions, and the halls of learning and arts 
and sciences have been abandoned — and the once 
proud cities, with their teeming thousands, have been 
laid in ruin, their places forgotten and their names 
only known in history, which is often shrouded in 
doubt and obscurity. Have we not a counterpart of 
this coming up and running down in lower forms of 
life ? " Where is the dust that was not once alive?" 
New life is nourished and sustained by the atoms that 
were once habitations of living organisms. 

Life germs are found everywhere : in air, and earth, 
and water. In this all-pervading life principle we are 
irresistibly forced to recognize the direct act of infinite 
creative energy, and have no evidence that by spon- 
taneous generation living organisms are produced. 

The experiments hitherto made with the most refined 
apparatus have failed to detect germs of living organ- 
isms when the Creator had not planted that life germ. 

While we find improved varieties of the same spe- 
cies, we can detect no evidence of the production of 
new species. The acorn produces the oak tree, and 
the apple seed the apple tree and fruit, but the kind of 
tree and fruit depends on certain conditions, such as 
soil, cultivation, climate, etc. The progress to ma- 
turity and the retrogression to primitive elements, in 
longer or shorter periods, appear to be governed by 



12 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

some law of compensation, perhaps not fully under- 
stood by scientists. There appears to be an ebbing as 
well as a flowing tide in the struggle of all living 
things, from lower to higher conditions, and if the 
falling back does not sink life to the level of the start- 
ing point, if something is gained with every upward 
effort, there is encouragement to hope that in every 
ebbing and flowing tide something has been gained for 
life — some firmer foot-hold has been planted upon 
stronger foundations. There will finally be an unfold- 
ment and outgrowth from this conflict between decay 
and death and life and progress that shall lift all life 
to a higher plane and give every intelligent being 
grander conceptions of the workings of the infinite 
plan of bringing a new and higher form of life out of 
decay and death. 

We will finally learn this great lesson, that what 
we call death, and our ideas of sadness connected 
with the thought of death, is not destruction — not the 
terrible spectre that haunted our imagination from our 
earliest recollection — but a mere falling back to rise 
again, a going down to come up again, a laying off of 
old garments to be clothed in new and brighter ones. 
We die, but, as Dr. Bonar says, 

We but die to live. 

It is from death we 're flying, 

Forever lives our life ; 

For us there is no dying. 

We die but as the Spring bud dies, 

In Summer's golden glow to rise ; 

These be our days of April bloom. 

Our July is beyond the tomb. 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. ■ 13 

Schiller gives us a beautiful analogy of the new 
life from nature when he says: 

" When the measured dance of the hours brings 
back the happy smile of spring the buried dead is 
born again in the life-glance of the sun. The germs 
which perished to the eye within the cold breast of the 
earth spring up with joy in the bright realm of day." 

Over all this changing world there presides an all- 
pervading, an all-controlling and changeless life-sus- 
taining power, under whose direction innumerable 
life-sustaining forces are kept in perpetual motion. 

Among these we have the superior and the subor- 
dinate. The premium mobile of this life force is the 
sun — the great central heart of our solar system — 
and under its throbbing pulse the multiplied forces of 
nature work with marvelous harmony and regularity 
for the accomplishment of nature's vast designs. 

" There is no such thing as death — 

In Nature nothing dies ; 
From each sad remnant of decay 

Some forms of life arise. 
The little leaf that falls, 

All brown and sere, to earth, 
Ere long will mingle with the buds 

That give the flower its birth." 



14 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



CHAPTER II. 



Paradise was first called "a garden eastward in 
Eden," said by Moses to have been planted by the 
Lord for the accommodation of the first human pair, 
according to one Bible chronology. Whether there 
was actually and literally a place thus set apart, with 
all the pleasures, beauties and delights ascribed to 
the ancient paradise, has been a matter of doubt with 
some who, notwithstanding, take the Bible as a reve- 
lation from God, but give many of its narratives a 
symbolical meaning. The word Eden signifies pleas- 
ure, or delight ; hence, some have concluded that noth- 
ing more is intended than a pleasant home or habita- 
tion, without any fixed locality. There are, however, 
other passages of Scripture that appear to give it a 
geographical locality, such as, " Cain dwelt in the 
land of Nod, on the east of Eden." — Gen., iv. 8. 
This place is also referred to in II. Kings, xix. 12 ; 
again in Ezekiel, xxvii. 23. The merchants of Eden 
are spoken of as dealing in spices, precious stones and 



PARADISE, THE HOME OF OUR ANCESTORS. 15 

gold. In Amos, i. 5, the scepter of the house of Eden 
is spoken of, and from the connection of this name 
with other names that frequently occur in the Bible 
it is quite likely that it was the name of a province, 
or country, without any reference to the ancient home 
of our race. 

As a matter of history, it is curious to notice the 
different opinions that have been entertained in refer- 
ence to the location of Eden, or the ancient paradise. 
There is scarcely a place conceivable where the fan- 
cies of men in different ages have not located para- 
dise. Dr. Adam Clarke, the great commentator, 
says: " Some place it in the third heaven, others in 
the fourth ; some within the orbit of the moon, others 
in the moon itself; some in the middle regions of the 
air, or beyond the earth's attraction ; some on the 
earth, others under the earth, and others within the 
earth ; some have fixed it in the north pole, others 
in the south ; some in Tartary, some in China ; some 
on the borders of the Ganges, and some in the Island 
of Ceylon ; some in Armenia, others in Africa, under 
the equator ; some in Mesopotamia, others in Syria, 
Persia, Arabia, Babylon and in Palestine." Others, 
again, have contended that it never did exist, and 
that the whole account is to be spiritually understood. 
There are many who now believe with the ancients, 
that there was a literal paradise, such as Moses gives 
an account of, under the name of Garden of Eden. 
Others give it a spiritual or symbolical meaning. One 
thing is certain, with all the uncertainties surrounding 



16 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

this question of location : It is certain our race had 
an origin in something higher than a mere fortuitous 
aggregation of material substances, or evolution from 
lower types of animals originating in indefinable 
monads or etherial molecules. 

Whatever the materialistic tendencies of modern 
philosophy may be with regard to the origin of all 
things, they cannot get away from the idea of an es- 
pecial creation and an Almighty Creator. But the 
tendency is to push the creative act, as well as the 
Creator's power, into the background as far as possible; 
and strong and persistent efforts are made to prove 
that, if some things were primarily created, they were 
but comparatively insignificant forms, out of which 
wondrous worlds have been evolved by laws governing 
the material universe, and that intelligence and all the 
faculties of the human soul have their origin in some 
low type of life which came from some place unknown 
to the academies of science. They would have us 
believe that the soul of man, glowing with hopes and 
high aspirations, and inward and anxious longings for 
a future life, is nothing but an outgrowth from trans- 
muted bread and meat, and cabbage and beans. The 
doctrine of spontaneous generation is given up by 
Prof. Tyndall, after several hundreds of experiments. 
All efforts to evolve life where creative power had not 
first placed life germs have failed; and every candid 
mind must admit a divine origin to life in any form, 
and especially to that higher form found in human or- 
ganisms, manifesting itself in human intelligence. 



PARADISE, THE HOME OF OUR ANCESTORS. 17 

Man, then, had a creator, and that creator provided 
a home for man in his primitive state. That the 
place with its surroundings was pleasant and adapted 
to man's condition may reasonably be supposed. 
That he was made capable of progressing out of lower 
into higher conditions is in accordance with the law 
of progression everywhere, and will scarcely be doubt- 
ed. With intelligence we naturally associate a power 
to choose between right and wrong ; and upon this fol- 
lows man's accountability to a higher law-making 
power; and out of this comes the natural sequence of 
punishment for transgression and rewards for obedi- 
ence. Moses, in his account of primitive man, gives 
a brief sketch of a rebellion, upon which follows a 
prophesy of his restoration and final elevation to a 
higher condition than that of the ancient paradise. 
Whatever of mystery and myths have surrounded the 
ancient home of our race, where the first man took 
the first woman by the hand and they commenced with 
united hand and heart the journey of life, there is 
something pleasant to the poetic soul in the name of 
paradise. It is to us an emblem of everything that ia 
beautiful and lovely, and points the weary traveler to 
the celestial abodes 

" Beyond the frost chain and the fever ; 
Beyond the rock waste and the river." 

It is sad to think that the natural tendency in the 

human mind to superstitious ideas in things connected 

with our spiritual nature has wrought fearful pictures 

out of this place of so many lovely associations. 



18 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

Mr. Blake, in his " Legendary Worlds of the Mid- 
dle Ages," says : " The famous knight, John of 
Mandeville, gravely wrote as follows: 'No mortal 
can go to or approach this paradise. By land no one 
can go there, on account of savage beasts which are in 
the desert, and because of mountains and rocks that 
cannot be passed over, and dark places without num- 
ber. Nor can one go there any better by sea ; the 
water rushes so wildly, it comes in so great waves, 
that no vessel dare sail against them. The water is 
so rapid, and makes so great a noise and tempest, 
that no one can hear, however loud he is spoken to. 
And so, when some great men with good courage have 
attempted several times to go by the river to paradise, 
in large companies, they have never been able to ac- 
complish their journey. On the contrary, many have 
died with fatigue in swimming against the watery 
waves. Many others have become blind, others have 
become deaf by the noise of the water, and others 
have been suffocated and lost in the waves, so that no 
mortal man can approach it except by the special 
grace of God.' " 

The history of the middle ages abounds with legends 
of the wildest as well as widely different characters, 
and many of the honest-hearted people believed these 
things as firmly as they believed any truth per- 
taining to their future welfare. Frequent attempts 
have been made to find the ancient home of our race ; 
among them we will notice the one recorded by Mr. 
Blake : 



19 

" The most curious and interesting of all attempts 
to discover the situation of paradise was that made 
half unconsciously by Columbus when he first found 
the American shore. 

" In his third voyage, when for the first time he 
reached the main land, he was persuaded not only that 
he had arrived at the extremity of Asia, but that he 
could not be far from the position of paradise. The 
Orinoco seemed to be one of those four great rivers 
which, according to tradition, came out of the garden 
inhabited by our first parents, and his hopes were sup- 
ported by the fragrant breezes that blew from the 
beautiful forests on its banks. This, he thought, was 
but the entrance to the celestial dwelling-place, and if 
he had dared — if a religious fear had not held 
back him who had risked everything amidst the ele- 
ments amongst men, he would have liked to push 
forward to where he might hope to find the celestial 
boundaries of the world, and, a little further, to have 
bathed his eyes, with profound humility, in the light 
of the flaming swords which were wielded by two ser- 
aphim before the gate of Eden. 

"He thus expresses himself on this subject in his 
letter to one of the monarchs of Spain, dated Hayti, 
October, 1498 : ' The Holy Scriptures attest that 
the Lord created paradise, and placed in it the tree of 
life, and made the four great rivers of the earth to 
pass out of it, the Ganges of India, the Tigris, the 
Euphrates, (passing from the mountains to form Mes- 
opotamia, and ending in Persia,) and the Nile, which 



20 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

rises in Ethiopia and goes to the Sea of Alexander. 
I cannot, nor have been ever able to find in the books 
of the Latins or Greeks anything authentic on the 
site of this terrestrial paradise, nor do I see anything 
more certain in the maps of the world. Some place 
it at the source of the Nile, in Ethiopia; but the trav- 
elers who have passed through those countries have 
not found either in the mildness of the climate or in 
the elevation of the site towards heaven anything that 
could lead to the presumption that paradise was there, 
and that the waters of the deluge were unable to 
reach it or cover it. Several pagans have written for 
the purpose of proving it was in the Fortunate Isles, 
which are the Canaries ; St. Isadore, Bede and Stra- 
bo, St. Ambrosius, Scotus and all judicious theo- 
logians affirm with one accord that paradise was in 
the East. It is from thence only that the enormous 
quantity of water can come, seeing that the course 
of the rivers is extremely long ; and these waters 
(of paradise) arrive here, where I am, and form a 
lake. There are great signs here of the neighborhood 
of the terrestrial paradise, for the site is entirely con- 
formable to the opinion of the saints and judicious 
theologians. The climate is of admirable mildness. I 
believe that if I passed beneath the equinoctial line, and 
arrived at the highest point of which I have spoken, 
I should find a milder temperature and a change in 
the stars and the waters; not that I believe that the 
point where the greatest height is situated is naviga- 
ble, or even that there is water there, or that one 



PARADISE, THE HOME OF OUR ANCESTORS. 21 

could reach it, but I am convinced that there is the 
terrestrial paradise, where no one can come except 
by the will of God.' 

" In the opinion of this illustrious navigator, the 
earth had the form of a pear, and its surface kept 
rising toward the east, indicated by the point of the 
fruit. It was there that he supposed might be found 
the garden where ancient tradition imagined the cre- 
ation of the first human couple was accomplished. 

" We can scarcely think without astonishment of 
the great amount of darkness that obscured scientific 
knowledge when this great man appeared on the 
scene of the world, nor of the rapidity with which the 
obscurity and vagueness of ideas were dissipated al- 
most immediately after his marvelous discoveries.' 
Scarcely had a half century elapsed after his death, 
than all the geographical fables of the middle ages 
did no more than excite smiles of incredulity, al- 
though during his life the universal opinion was not 
much advanced upon the times of the famous knight, 
John of Mandeville," as mentioned above. 

These legends only show the wonderful fertility oi 
the human mind under the influence of superstition, 
and the tenacity with which it clings to traditions 
and fables, as if they were essential to its religious 
enjoyments here and happiness hereafter. Discov- 
eries in science have done much toward sifting the 
chaff from the wheat, and extremists in the scientific 
world are now disposed to throw aside the wheat be- 
cause it was once mixed with chaff. We should not 



22 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

reject sublime truths because they have been mixed 
with errors by the ignorance and superstitions of men. 
Astronomy is not rejected on account of its former 
connections with the superstitions of astrology or the 
errors of the early astronomers. Chemistry is no less 
valuable, in all its wonderful operations and transfor- 
mations, on account of its former connection with the 
vagaries and errors of alchemy. So the teachings 
of the Bible, in reference to man's moral relations to 
the Creator, are none the less true because supersti- 
tious and ignorant men have mixed with them legends 
and fables of their own invention, and have given 
such interpretations as are calculated to repel and 
discourage the honest seeker for truth. The Bible 
needs science to brush away the chaff of error and the 
fogs and mists of superstition, and science needs the 
teachings of the Bible to aid it in building light- 
houses and towers on the coasts of the stormy ocean 
of life, over which we are moving toward the shores 
of a brighter world and a higher destiny. 



COSMOS AND THE BIBLE IN HARMONY. 23 



CHAPTER III. 



COSMOS AND THE BIBLE IN HARMONY. 

The change of cosmography produced by science 
does not conflict with the teachings of the Bible in ref- 
erence to the creation of all things, notwithstanding 
the progress of knowledge, during the past two hun- 
dred years, has produced a great change in the relig- 
ious beliefs in reference to the structure of the universe 
and the exegeses of theologians in biblical cosmogra- 
phy- 

The discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and others, 

which caused great alarm to the expounders of the 
Bible, are now found to be harmless in their re- 
sults, and in no manner to come in conflict with the 
teachings of the Divine Revelation. This alarm at 
new discoveries arose from the mistaken apprehension 
that the Bible, as a revelation from God, should be 
regarded as a critical treatise on the cosmos of the 
universe, and that every new discovery of a purely 
scientific character should be sustained by its direct 
teaching and should stand or fall bv its decisions. 

The Bible, as a moral code, does not pretend to 
treat on scientific subjects ; and yet, after having been 



24 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

subjected to the severest criticisms, in its moral teach- 
ings as well as its utterances in reference to scientific 
subjects, it has been found, when correctly interpreted 
and properly understood, to be in harmony with 
science. The latest scientific discoveries have not 
shaken any one of the main pillars on which the super- 
structure of Christianity rests. 

The theory of a plurality of worlds, inhabited by 
intelligent beings, may, at first view, appear to come 
in conflict with God's moral government and the in- 
stitutions of religion in our world. 

A careful examination of the extent of the provis- 
ions of the Divine Economy in the scheme of moral 
restoration will remove these difficulties. 

It is not the teaching of the Bible, but the wrong 
interpretation of it, that has caused the numerous di- 
visions among Christians, as well as their opposition 
to progressive ideas in natural and physical science. 
We should never be afraid to look at scientific facts, 
from a fear that they might lead us in a wrong direc- 
tion. That Infinite Intelligence which is the personi- 
fication of truth itself will make all truths harmonize 
in the final outcome. No matter what contradictions 
may appear to stare us in the face during our investi- 
gations in the different fields of science, they disappear 
as we progress toward higher attainments in knowl- 
edge and a better understanding of the harmonies 
between nature and her laws and the Divine Hand 
that holds and directs her mysterious operations. 
And while we should be on our guard against adopting 



COSMOS AND THE BIBLE IN HARMONY. 25 

mere speculations in science, founded on doubtful 
hypotheses, we should, nevertheless, be willing to look 
at facts clearly demonstrated by physical laws, and, 
having obtained a resting place on a basis of clearly- 
proven facts, we may proceed in our arguments from 
analogies in nature and arrive at conclusions for which 
we would have no warrant in mere abstract deductions 
without primary facts. 

In the discoveries of the telescope new fields were 
brought to view, and with them new truths that could 
not be successfully controverted. On account of the 
evidences by which these truths were supported, came 
a determined opposition, and even persecutions, on 
the part of the expounders of the Bible, from a fear 
that these new discoveries might come in conflict with 
some of its teachings. The question, then, with those 
zealots, should not have been, Will these discoveries 
lead us from our old habits of thinking and believing ? 
but, Are they true? Instead of refusing to look 
through Galileo's telescope, from a fear that they 
might see the moons of Jupiter and find other evidence 
of the earth's and planets' movement around the sun, 
they should first have made themselves acquainted 
with the nature of his invention, then, finding that 
it was neither art-magic nor sleight-of-hand, that 
glass of certain forms placed in a tube will magnify 
distant objects and bring to view that which cannot 
be seen by the naked eye, and these facts being once 
established, the over-zealous priests who preached 
from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye 



26 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

gazing up into heaven?" should themselves have gazed 
through the telescope, and looked at the harmonious 
movements of the planets and their satellites around 
the central sun. Errors that are entertained against 
the clearest convictions and demonstrations of truth 
are inexcusable. 

Theories in science and religion are not necessarily 
true because they are old. The astronomical theories 
of Ptolemy, which held sway over the minds of men 
for two thousand years and were interwoven with the 
religious beliefs of the Christian church, had to yield 
to the discoveries of later astronomers. 

The well-worn grooves and tramways in which theo- 
ries founded on doubtful hypotheses have run will 
frequently have to be reconstructed. 

The outer boundaries of human knowledge are yet 
in the dim and shadowy distance. Nature, in her 
wonder and unfoldment, moves by gradual and, ap- 
parently, tardy steps, and those who attempt to inter- 
pret her mysterious operations will have to sit 
meditatively in her vast temple and be receptive to 
the impressions that flow into the longing soul from 
the Infinite Source of all Wisdom. 

Theories should be formed from clearly-established 
truths. Instead of supposing a thing to be true because 
it corresponds with some antiquated notions that 
have come down to us through the uncertain channels 
of tradition, and then demanding that nature's laws 
should conform to our preconceived notions, we 
should be willing to bow with submission to truth 



COSMOS AND THE BIBLE IN HARMONY. 27 

and follow its divine teachings. Expressions found 
in the Bible that accord with our observations ot 
natural phenomena should not be construed so as to 
contradict the well-established facts in nature's laws. 
The rising and the setting of the sun, as these terms 
are generally used, do not allow us to conclude that 
the sun actually goes down in the evening and comes 
up in the morning. Although the expression would 
justify the conclusion, yet the truth is clearly demon- 
strated that the sun stands still and the earth rotates 
on its axis and gives us a succession of day and night. 
Again, in the winter the sun is said to run lower and 
its rays strike the earth obliquely, and rise higher 
in the summer and its rays strike the earth directly. 
The truth is, the earth's axis inclines from the sun 
in the winter and toward the sun in the summer, 
while the sun remains stationary. The same is 
true in reference to the position of the sun in the 
zodiac, through which it is said to pass in its annual 
round. 

The men of the present generation who claim to be 
defenders of the Bible against the encroachments of 
infidelity, now manifest a surprise at the stupidity of 
their ancestors for not receiving the truth when it was 
presented to them with such clear demonstrations by 
the revelations of the telescope. 

It is now acknowledged that the expression, " rising 
and setting of the sun," does not teach that the earth 
is the center of the universe, and that the sun, moon, 
planets, and all the stars, only a comparatively small 



28 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

distance out in space, are performing a rapid whirl 
around our earth every twenty-four hours. 

Through the teaching of modern astronomy we are 
now permitted to look out on a universe of wondrous 
harmony, held together by the mighty grasp of gravi- 
tation ; and still the teachings of the Bible, in all its 
sacred precepts and promises, have not had one single 
passage marred by these discoveries in astronomy. 

The priests at the sacred altars now find that their 
forefathers were alarmed without cause — that the per- 
secutions of Galileo and others were the result of a 
blind zeal, "without knowledge." 

Following the age of new discoveries in astronomy 
come the revelations of geology, and with it the as- 
tounding announcement that this earth is more than 
six thousand years old. The evidences on which this 
announcement rests are not to be controverted. The 
rocks and fossils speak in an unmistakable language, 
and say, " This world on which we live may have 
existed for millions of years." The first effort was 
to throw discredit on the teachings of geology ; but as 
evidences were multiplied, and neither argument nor 
ridicule could stand against the clearly-revealed truths 
of geology, consternation and a kind of forced distrust 
seized the minds of the timid, and the question came 
up with a peculiar solemnity, " Shall we give up the 
teachings of the Bible for the revelations of geology ?" 
If geology is correct in its calculations, then, as a 
natural result, Moses in his Genesis must be wrong. 
The Bible was looked at by its advocates as the world's 



COSMOS AND THE BIBLE IN HARMONY. 29 

only hope for a final triumph of light over darkness, 
right over wrong, and happiness over misery. Shall 
this hope be blasted with one dash of the geolog- 
ical pen ? Shall the moral world's great torch be ex- 
tinguished and our race be left forever in the dark ? 
These were the perplexing questions that forced them- 
selves upon the minds of the thoughtful, while the 
thoughtless enthusiasts who take their theology at 
second hand, and who, like a blind bird which gulps 
down every insect thrown in its mouth, asked no 
questions and cared little about the result of the im- 
pending conflict. But, not willing to yield all to the 
discoveries of geology, the man who has received the 
Bible as a revelation from God reads again, carefully, 
thoughtfully, the first chapter of Genesis. He com- 
mences, " In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth." At the end of these solemn words 
he finds a period, a full stop. A new idea flashes 
on his mind. He asks himself the question, When 
was that beginning ? Was it six thousand years ago ? 
No ; Moses does not say so. He simply announces 
the sublime truth that all created things had a begin- 
ning ; but who can reckon by the years that measure 
our time when that beginning was. Many millions 
of years may have passed since the boundless void 
was filled with rolling and shining worlds. Now, let 
geology run back in mathematical numbers, and trace 
her periods in fossils, rocks and skeletons, until the 
mind becomes bewildered in its backward march to 
find the beginning ; and still the Bible is true when it 



30 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

says, " In the beginning God created the heavens and 
the earth." Now geology and the Bible join hands. 
The former teaches that we have a world of wondrous 
structure. That different deposits and formations tell 
of long ages past. The latter reveals to us the origin 
of all worlds. That there exists in the vast universe a 
power to produce material forms and put in operation 
forces that, in accordance with the laws of their exist- 
ence, work out the great problems of a material uni- 
verse in obedience to a divine plan ; that there is a 
progress from lower to higher forms in the material 
universe, and from lower to higher types in living 
organisms, is clearly demonstrated by scientific ex- 
plorations in the empire of nature ; but science has 
never evolved one particle of matter nor produced one 
living organism without an especial primary creation. 
The Bible gives us the only rational account of crea- 
tion, and the language of the Hebrew prophets re- 
ceives additional importance from the more recent 
discoveries in astronomical science. This is especially 
so in reference to the discovery, through the telescope, 
of the magnitude of creation. On the supposition 
that our earth is the center of the universe, and our 
race the only subjects of God's moral government in 
physical forms, and that this earth was made for man 
and man for the earth, would we not naturally conclude 
that our race must be very highly estimated by the 
Infinite Father, and be viewed as the center of his 
moral government. Such views would deprive many 
of the declarations of the inspired volume of their 



COSMOS AND THE BIBLE IN HARMONY. 31 

beauty and sublimity. If ours was the only nation 
in God's great universe, would the inspired prophet 
have said, " All nations before him are as nothing ?" 
doubtless referring to the nations of this earth. 

Again, it is said: "He sitteth upon the circle of 
the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grass- 
hoppers. The nations are as the drop of a bucket- 
All the inhabitants of the world are reputed as noth- 
ing in His sight ; and He doth according to His will 
in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of 
the earth. Thou has made heaven, and the heaven 
of heavens, with all their host, and Thou preservest. 
them all; and the host of heaven worship Thee. 
When I consider Thy heavens, what is man, that 
Thou art mindful of him ? " 

When the telescope revealed the fact that our solar 
system was but a small point in the sidereal heavens, 
and our earth dwindled almost to annihilation in 
comparison with other worlds, both in number and 
magnitude, dogmatic theologians hurled their anathe- 
mas against these pestilent worlds that arose to their 
astonished vision as so many specters from the lower 
world. But it has been in this case as in the one 
referred to about the period of creation : when they 
read the passage above quoted, in reference to the 
host of heaven and the insignificance of our race, 
they found that these sublime descriptions received 
additional force and significance as their views were 
enlarged with regard to the vastness of creation ; and 
now they find that the Bible is the only book in 



32 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

existence that takes in all creation. They are not only 
willing to admit the truth of astronomical discoveries, 
but are ready to say to the astronomer : Lengthen 
out your tube ; increase the power of your reflectors 
and refractors a hundred fold ; bring as many more 
worlds to view as you can find ; let new systems arise 
to view ; fling your plummet line of investigation 
to the farthest possible point of the universe, and the 
sublime declaration of our Bible in its description 01 
Jehovah will take them all in. We say, then : Come, 
welcome, telescope ! Come, welcome, spectroscope ! 
Welcome, every renewed effort of the mightiest mind 
and most approved instruments for exploring the 
physical universe ! Lead us out as far as possible 
from our little earth home. If we cannot visit them, 
let us at least look at the homes of the millions on 
millions who dwell in the boundless kingdoms of the 
one universal Father ; and, as we move out, and look 
at these shining worlds, we will keep our Bible in 
hand, and the better understand its inimitable lan- 
guage when it says: "All the inhabitants of the 
world are reputed as nothing in His sight." " The 
nations are as a drop of a bucket." And while our 
adoring souls fall prostrate before His divine majesty, 
may we also remember that He is our universal 
Father and Protector, and provides for us with a fatherly 
care, and comes to us in the tenderness of His love; 
and while the host of heaven worship Him, we may bear 
a part in the grand chorus that goes up from innumer- 
able worlds : "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth." 



CONDITIONS OF LIFE IN OUR WORLD. 33 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE VARIOUS CONDITIONS OF LIFE IN OUR WORLD. 

Among the marvelous things in living organisms 
are the strange variety of living creatures, and the 
means through which their wants are supplied and 
their existence perpetuated. One class of animals 
live and flourish where other classes would immedi- 
ately perish. The fish out of the water gasps and 
struggles a few minutes, and, if not hastily returned 
to his native element, soon breathes his last ; the air 
breathing animal soon dies where the fish is at home 
and perfectly comfortable. Among the animals out 
of the water there is also a great difference in the 
means as well as mode of existence, even down to the 
minute animalcula ; some will live and multiply in 
acids and die in alkalies, others soon perish in alkalies 
and do well in acids. Some insects will live without 
water, or moisture, while others must have a constant 
supply of water to sustain life. Some animals flourish 
in the extreme north, amid almost perpetual frosts 
and snow ; others, again, can only live under the 
scorching sun of a tropical climate. To change their 
positions would produce their extinction. It does 



34 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

not come within the range of this work to give a 
description of these different forms of animal life, but 
merely refer to the fact of their existence ; in accord- 
ance with the design of the work, to show that, if we 
find life on our earth under such different conditions, 
we may conclude that the Infinite Creator, who made 
life after such different patterns to exist under such 
different conditions, in the air, and earth and ocean, 
on our globe, could, in accordance with the same 
plan of variety, create innumerable forms of living 
beings to inhabit the spheres which His almighty 
hand has formed, and sent spinning on their axes and 
moving in their orbits through the immeasurable 
depths of space. 

With regard to the supply of food, or nourishment, 
for these million forms of life, we trace the operations 
of the same designing hand recognized by the psalm- 
ist when he says: "All these wait upon Thee. Thou 
openest Thy hand, and givest them their meat in due 
season." And a higher authority says : "Behold the 
fowls of the air, they have no barns nor store houses," 
etc. 

The supply is furnished by the operation of nature's 
incomprehensible chemistry, and the life of one part 
is sustained by the death of the other. It is an almost 
universal rule through the domain of terrestrial nature 
that life is sustained by death. Animals and vegeta- 
bles make up the supply of food for living creatures, 
and both must die before they can supply the demands 
of life. The newly hatched little fish takes his 



CONDITIONS OF LIFE IN OUR WORLD. 35 

breakfast the first morning of his existence on the 
minute animalcula that struggles and flounders through 
the mashes and network of the stagnant water, where 
it has been feeding and feasting on the green scum 
produced by the rays of sunshine. Here are grand 
pasture fields for millions of these animalcula, often 
invisible to the naked eye. While the little fish feeds 
on these, along comes another fish, whose stomach and 
appetite have outgrown the delicate food furnished to 
baby fish, and gulps down the little fish that had eaten 
the animalcula ; and before the delicious morsel is half 
digested in his stomach, a still larger fish comes along, 
hungry for his breakfast, and down goes the fish that 
swallowed the fish that eat the minnow that had feasted 
and fattened on the animalcula. In almost endless 
succession, from the lower to the higher class of 
animals, one feasts on the other, until man comes 
along and selects the most suitable out of the whole 
range of animal and vegetable life to build up his 
earthly tabernacle. There is, then, in nature an 
endless, revolving chain, from death to life, and life 
not only in multiplied, but in multifarious forms. 

There is another marvelous feature in this general 
arrangement for the supply of a hungry world of 
living beings : it is the means through which the prey 
is seized and the food obtained ; and at the same time 
the animal doomed to the slaughter is provided with 
means of escape or weapons of defense against his 
deadly foe. This makes the world of life one great 
battle-field. Either by running, jumping, flying or 



36 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

swimming, and often by other ingenious contrivances, 
as the spider spreads his net to catch the fly, the 
hungry expect to catch their prey. Those animals 
feeding on herbs and grain and seeds are provided 
with means to gather and instincts for storing away 
their food, when not especially provided for by men, 
as in the case of domestic animals. 

If such is life on our planet, with all the compli- 
cated arrangements to sustain it, while in many in- 
stances we can see no good reason why some forms of 
life should exist, unless it is to try our patience or 
excite our sympathy for the suffering, may we not 
reasonably conclude that other worlds are also the 
abode of different forms of life ? 

Prof. Mitchell, in his Popular Astronomy, says : 

" It would be most incredible to assert, as some 
have done, that our planet, so small and insignificant 
in its proportions, when compared with other planets 
with which it is allied, is the only world in the whole 
universe filled with sentient, rational and intelligent 
beings capable of comprehending the grand mysteries 
of the physical universe." 

Where we lack positive information on a subject so 
interesting, we may safely be guided by the analogies 
of nature. 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 37 



CHAPTER V. 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE WHERE LIFE 
MAY EXIST. 

Objects around us, as well as countries, kingdoms 
and empires, are relatively great or small. The gar- 
den is large in comparison with the tiny flower bed ; 
but the garden becomes an insignificant parcel when 
compared with the large farm ; and the farm, in turn, 
loses its importance in comparison with the county; 
and the county, state, republic or empire, each 
in turn loses its importance as it is exceeded by 
other and larger territories. The child that has 
always moved in the narrow home circle receives sin- 
gular impressions with regard to distance and extent 
of territory, if it is old enough to appreciate the 
pleasure of traveling, when it makes its first trip from 
home. A few miles seem a long journey. But when 
the child grows to manhood and travels over the length 
and breadth of his own country, the first ten-mile trip 
shrinks to an insignificant point. Again, as men 
travel over oceans and continents, or make a journey 



38 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

"around the world," their views are wonderfully 
enlarged with regard to the extent of territory where 
human beings have their habitations, and where ani- 
mal and vegetable life abounds in thousands of forms 
and under varied conditions. 

Before the invention of the telescope, and the con- 
sequent discoveries in sidereal astronomy, men were 
taught to look at our earth as the only place in the 
universe where the throb of one great life-giving heart 
could possibly be felt. To the ancients, the pale blue 
sky was a solid sphere or crystal vault into which the 
sun, moon and stars were fixed, as diamonds or gems, 
to adorn the celestial vault, and to serve " for signs 
and for seasons, and for days and for years," and to 
give us light by day and by night. The Fathers of 
the early Christian church advanced from the earlier 
pagan notions, and conceived a heaven of superposed 
layers, making the first, second and third heaven, and 
some went as high as the tenth heaven, and even far- 
ther, according to their conceptions of the grandeur 
of the universe. TJiey considered these heavens as 
so many hemispheres supported on the solid earth. 
Their most advanced ideas of the works of creation 
left them like little children amusing themselves 
around a little flower garden, without the means or 
the power of advancing out into the great world be- 
yond the range of their limited vision. As the farms 
and orchards, and counties, countries and continents 
are unknown to children sporting around their flowery 
lawns, and feasting on a few berries and fruits in the 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 39 

old homestead garden, so were the life-bearing worlds 
of this great universe unknown to the earlier dwellers 
on this earth. 

No movement could be made out of these narrow 
circles without some aid to our natural vision. That 
Providence which appoints means to ends, and makes 
a progression from lower to higher conditions possible 
to all intelligent beings, so ordered that Hans Lipper- 
shey, or Lippersheim, as some call him, should make 
lenses of various kinds, and for what purpose we need 
not state here. In the year 1606, while the children 
of Lippersheim were playing in the yard with his 
lenses, "one of them happened to hold one before the 
other to look at a distant clock. Their great surprise 
in seeing how near it seemed attracted their father's 
attention." He soon made several experiments with 
them, and the interesting discovery in a short time 
spread to different countries, and from this accidental 
discovery Galileo obtained his ideas for the construc- 
tion of the telescope. In reference to this discovery, 
Huyghens, the distinguished astronomer, " declared 
that the man who could invent the telescope unguided 
by chance would be more than mortal." If we sub- 
stitute for the word " chance" that of overruling 
Providence, we will have more rational conceptions of 
that Infinite Father above us, who leads his erring 
children, step by step, out of ignorance and darkness 
to a superior light and knowledge. 

The telescope at once swept from the minds of men 
the myths and errors of the ancient astronomers, and 



40 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

revealed to us numerous worlds of such magnitude 
and magnificence as to cause our globe to shrink into 
an insignificant little garden in an obscure corner ot 
the old homestead farm. With the discovery of the 
telescope came the possibility of calculating the rate 
at which light passes through space, by observing the 
transit of planets across the sun and satellites across 
their primary planets. 

As the carpenter lays his foot rule on his timbers 
to measure the materials for the construction of build- 
ings, and the surveyor stretches his chain over the 
land to measure section lines and to plant his mile 
posts, so the astronomer stretches his line of light 
motion from the earth to the planets and from the 
planets to the sun. But, going beyond the sun, he 
finds miles to become meaningless and as insignificant 
as a foot rule would be in a surveyor's hand to meas- 
ure a line across a continent. Hence he makes a 
measuring line of the distance from the earth to the 
sun, and instead of saying so many miles, he says so 
many times the earth's distance from the sun. But 
it is exceedingly difficult to realize the length of this 
measuring line. A reference to things familiar to us 
may serve to impress the mind with distances and 
magnitudes in our solar system. We know how long 
it would take an express train, running thirty miles an 
hour, on one of our railroads, to run across the con- 
tinent. With a knowledge of the distance of the 
planets from the central orb, we can calculate how 
long it would take an express train, running night and 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 41 

day, without intermission, to accomplish the distance 
from the sun to the different planets in that system of 
worlds to which our earth belongs. Remembering at 
the same time that this sun system is but a small frac- 
tion of that universe which is as boundless as infini- 
tude, let us then draw an imaginary line from the 
sun to the planet Neptune, and in imagination start a 
locomotive with an express train from the sun. Run- 
ning thirty miles per hour, we would reach the planet 
Mercury in 136 years. Dashing past this little planet 
at the same rate of speed, we would arrive at Venus 
in 251 years. We are now getting a considerable 
distance from our starting point ; but, in proportion to 
the length of the journey we may compare this dis- 
tance to a child's first ten-mile trip from home. On- 
ward we move, and reach the earth in 348 years. 
Going outward from the earth, we would reach the 
planet Mars in 532 years. A beautiful little planet 
very much resembling our own earth. Between Mars 
and Jupiter we pass the zone of the asteroids in 850 
years from the sun ; and by the time we arrive at the 
giant planet Jupiter we will find that our train has 
been 1,809 years on its journey, and still we are not 
half way to the end of the journey. Our next sta- 
tion will be the beautiful planet Saturn, where we 
arrive in 3,318 years ; and Uranus would be reached 
in 6,662 years. Now we have only one more station 
to make before we reach the frontier of our solar 
system. This is Neptune, the farthest planet known 
to astronomers ; and continuing at the same rate of 



42 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

speed with which our imaginary train started, it would 
reach its destination in 10,465 years. This planet 
may be considered the border state of the republic of 
worlds belonging to our solar system. It has a sin- 
gular history, and if its territory could be annexed to 
the national dominion of its discoverers, France and 
England both would claim the owership. But as 
neither of these nations can take possession of it, it 
must remain as neutral territory in nature's vast do- 
main, to be admired by all who love to contemplate 
its slow and majestic movement on the outskirts of 
one among the thousands of systems that enter into 
the universe. If a dweller of this earth could take 
his stand on Neptune and look up into the celestial 
vault, he would see the same starry heavens we see 
from the earth. The same constellations marked out 
by the ancients would be as familiar to him there as 
they are here, while the earth and the interior planets 
would all have disappeared, and could only be seen 
through a powerful telescope. Although it would 
take an express train 10,465 years to reach this planet 
from the sun, yet the distance is so small compared 
with the distance to the fixed stars, that there would 
scarcely be a change noticeable in the position of the 
fixed stars. 

And now, if we wish to engage in an exploration 
of worlds in the great plantation of the Infinite, we 
must leave our imaginary locomotive and prepare for 
a more rapid flight through space. No mortal being 
could expect to live through the years it would require 



VASTNES5 OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 43 

to make a journey on an express train across the 
semi-diameter of our solar system. Methuselah would 
still be a young man compared to the years it would 
require to do this. 

Could we, then, for a time divest ourselves of the 
ponderable substances of which our bodies are com- 
posed, and start out on an exploration of worlds of 
life and light that lie beyond the range of our own 
sun system, we would find that the stars we, at our 
great distance, are looking at as fixed stars, are so 
many suns, with planets and satellites similar to our 
own, and in many instances far exceeding ours in 
magnitude and magnificence. They only appear to 
us as fixed in unchangeable positions, as laid down in 
the star maps of astronomers. But they are moving 
in mighty orbits around different centers of gravity. 
It is their immense distance that makes them appear 
stationary to us. A locomotive flashes by our dwell- 
ing like a thing of life on swiftest wings, and in a 
few moments it is out of sight. The same locomotive 
seen ten or fifteen miles off, on a level prairie, at the 
same speed, seems stationary, and we have to watch 
it for some time before we can determine the course 
in which it is moving. On the same principle astrono- 
mers may look at distant stars for thousands of years 
and not detect their change of position. 

Even if we could travel on the swift wings of light, 
traveling at the rate of twelve millions of miles per 
minute, it would require nearly four hours to go from 
the sun to Neptune, ten years to go from the sun to 



44 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

the fixed stars, and to reach others of the bright stars 
that adorn our nightly sky would require more time 
than is allotted to an ordinary life for man. 

We might then stretch our imagination for a more 
rapid flight through impenetrable regions of darkness 
and the silence of death, between worlds aglow with 
light, and, in all probability, teeming with life in dif- 
ferent forms. We would soon find ourselves in the 
presence of other suns, and sun systems, and in the 
dim distance still other lights would burst upon us 
from blazing suns and rolling worlds, as so many 
bright spots in the desert wastes of infinitude. 

But whence have we come and whither are we go- 
ing ? Perhaps only human thoughts and disembodied 
spirits can visit these bright abodes and mingle with 
the celestial hosts. Here, then, our thoughts may 
linger around archways and temples without number ; 
and high and low and deep and broad have lost their 
meaning. The end is not here. The highest and 
the lowest are not here ; neither can the utmost lim- 
its be found, for there are no limits to space. 

" Lo, these are parts of His works ; but the thunder 
of His power, who can understand?" The thoughts, 
bewildered, return to our own little earth home, and 
exclaim, " God is all in all !" "What is man that 
Thou art mindful of him ?" And waking to a full 
consciousness from these dreaming thoughts, we ask 
for some information about this mysterious being who 
reared these wondrous structures. We may go to the 
wise men of this world, and they will tell us that they 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 45 

are only standing on the shores of infinitude, picking 
up a few pebbles of truth, and looking at them, trying 
to find out something, while the great ocean of truth, 
in its boundlessness, lies still beyond. The world 
" by wisdom knows not God," and by searching it 
cannot find him out. Heathen mythology tells of 
gods many, and lords many, but these are more 
powerless than those who made them. 

The Hebrew poet tells us, " The heavens declare 
the glory of God and the firmament showeth His 
handiwork." We turn to the Bible for further in- 
formation, and on the first page we read, " In the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 
After this grand announcement, there comes a solemn 
pause, and no answer is given to the anxious inquiry, 
When was the beginning ? No one can tell. The 
Bible tells us that, about six thousand years ago, God 
prepared our earth as an abode for a moral race of 
beings, responsible to him for their conduct, and amid 
all the rebellious uprisings of this race, held account- 
able to the highest authority in the universe, they 
have been dealt with in kindness and in love. The 
plan of a moral restoration to the divine favor reveals 
to us the astounding truth that Infinity comes out 
of his own eternity, and vails himself in our humani- 
ty, to lift the erring ones out of their misery and sor- 
row to a nearer relation to himself. He by whom 
all things were made clothes himself in the mantle of 
his own materials ; and now Infinity shines out upon a 
whole universe of intelligent beings through a divine 



46 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

and glorified humanity. " Principalities and powers 
in heavenly places now learn new lessons from the 
wondrous scheme of man's restoration." He who 
originally said, "Let there be light, and there was 
light," now sheds a diviner light on an intelligent 
universe, to give the light of the knowledge of the 
diviner glory in the face of a divine incarnation. 

The grand discoveries in sidereal astronomy, during 
the last two hundred years, strongly indicate that our 
earth is not the only inhabited world in the universe. 

There is nothing in the moral aspect of this ques- 
tion of a plurality of worlds that can possibly come 
in conflict with the revealed will of God, as recorded 
in the Bible. On the other hand, there are strong 
intimations, if not positive declarations, that there 
are other worlds than ours, inhabited by intelligent 
beings. And the vastness of the universe, and the 
existence of intelligent beings in different and distant 
worlds, all sharing an interest in the divine manifes- 
tations through Christ, give us grander conceptions of 
the universal fatherhood of God and the unity of the 
divine family. This, however, will be more fully 
treated when w T e present the Scripture argument on 
this subject. It is said that, at the creation of this 
earth, " The morning stars sang together and the 
sons of God shouted for joy." 

"Around the sun, in orbs of light, 
The planets pulsate, roll and shine, 

And, glowing in the darkened night, 
They sing an anthem all divine, 

Of life and light, and joy and love, 
And the creative power above." 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 47 

The analogies of nature lead us to the conclusion 
that our earth was not the first life-bearing planet in 
the great universe. How many millions of years may 
have passed away since the matter contained in suns 
and planets was first projected into space no one will 
pretend to tell. We have the most striking evidence 
that over and anterior to matter there exists an eter- 
nal creative power, possessed of infinite wisdom and 
goodness, appointing means for the accomplishment 
of his wise designs through the whole realm of crea- 
tion. 

" Speaking through nature, weaving periods, times, 
Angels, angelic heavens, and poet rhymes." 

In looking on these vast fields of nature — a limit- 
less universe — we may say: 

" All matter is God's tongue — 
Out from its motions God's thoughts are spun ; 
And the realms of space are the octave bars, 
And the music notes are the suns and stars." 

All creation does not bloom at once in one eternal 
youth. There is an onward march to maturity in 
worlds, as in their flora and fauna. Orchards have 
their growing, blooming and fruit-bearing seasons. 
It may be so with these mighty worlds planted in 
space by the omnipotent hand. Our earth, in its 
present physical form, may be comparatively young, 
although in moral depravity and deeds of darkness 
and violence many think it is quite old enough, and 



48 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

about time its affairs were wound up and a great part 
of its inhabitants forced into a moral bankruptcy. 
Millions of acres of its virgin soil, however, still in- 
vite millions more of living beings to come and possess 
the land, and the analogies of nature indicate to us 
that through the broad fields of the universal empire 
there is room for all the life that is to be, as well as 
for that which is now existing. 

" The earth, trembling in infant grace, 
Whirls round with fair and youthful face ; 
And as the cycles dimly run, 
And still the earth receives the sun, 
Man says that life and death complete 
Are laid here at the infant's feet. 
Not so — the infant grows a man 
Upspringing, and God's perfect plan 
Is not cut short with downward wing, 
But rises upward, and from clay 
Links man unto the realm of day." 

The belief among the ancients that our earth was 
the center of the universe, and that the sun and plan- 
ets, and all the stars, performed their diurnal journey 
around this common center, precluded from the minds 
of the wisest of their astronomers any proper concep- 
tion of a plurality of worlds. It is only since the 
telescope has revealed the true structure of the uni- 
verse that the minds of men have ventured out from 
their own small habitation and given expression to a 
great truth, almost forced upon them by the analogies 
of nature. 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 49 

" Nor is this earth but set apart 
To feel the throb of one great heart, 
For life and motion — beauty, power — 
Are not expended in a dower 
Of earthly dust and human clay, 
But reaches far, and far away, 
Till every star and every world", 
By portions of that light entwirled, 
Fashioned and shaped in forms divine, 
That in their life and light shall shine." 

These conceptions of life in other worlds give sig- 
nificance to many of the sublime passages found in 
the Bible, in reference to the vastness of the works 
of creation. 

" Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens 
is the Lord's." — Deut. x. 14. On this passage, Dr. 
Adam Clark says : 

" These words were probably intended to point out 
the immensity of God's creation, in which we may 
readily conceive one system of heavenly bodies, and 
another beyond them, and others still in endless pro- 
gression through the whole vortex of space — every 
star in the vast abyss of nature being a sun with its 
peculiar and numerous attendant worlds ! Thus there 
may be systems on systems in endless gradations up 
to the throne of God." 

The same author says, in his comment on I. Kings, 
viii. 27, " Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens 
cannot contain thee." 

" The words are all in the plural number in the 
Hebrew, 'the heavens and the heavens of heavens.' 
What do these words imply ? That there are systems 

4 



50 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

and systems of systems, each possessing its sun and its 
primary and secondary planets, all extending bey«nd 
each other in unlimited space, in the same regular 
and graduated order which we find to prevail in what 
we call our solar system, which, probably, in its 
thousands of millions of miles in diameter, is to some 
others no more than the area of the lunar orbit to 
that of the planet Neptune. When God, his mani- 
fold wisdom, his creative energy, and that space which 
is unlimited, are considered, it is no hyperbole to say 
that, although the earth has been created nearly six 
thousand years ago, suns, the centers of systems, may 
have been created at so immense a distance that their 
light has not yet reached our earth, though traveling 
at the rate of one hundred and ninety thousand miles 
every second, or upward of a million times swifter 
than the motion of a cannon ball! This may be said 
to be inconceivable ; but what is even all this to the 
vast immensity of space ? Had God created a system 
like ours in every six days since the foundation of the 
world, there might have been by this time (1819) three 
hundred and three thousand five hundred and seventy- 
five mundane systems. They would occupy but a 
speck in the inconceivable immensity of space." 

Rolling and shining worlds, and floating atoms in 
the sunbeams, are alike under the control of laws es- 
tablished by infinite wisdom. Matter is a unit, and 
worlds and atoms are but different combinations of the 
same material, under the same all-controlling hand. 

While beholding bright orbs moving along their 



VASTNES3 OF THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 51 

appointed highways, marked out for them by the 
omnipotent hand, appearing so small to us when com- 
pared with our earth, we would soon change our 
views if we could take our observation from one of 
our nearest planets. Let us, in imagination, take our 
stand on Mars or Jupiter. Looking back toward the 
earth, we might say : 

'' Strangely it looks to me to see from far 
The planet earth like any other star ! 
Once its round side seemed limitless, but now 
Its disc is like an apple on a bough. 
All size is relative, and God alone 
Knoweth the actual value of each one 
Of the bright globes that in the ether swim, 
And worlds, because of men, are dear to him." 

How many have listened, in childhood days, to the 
beautiful nursery song, commencing 

" Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 
How I wonder what you are." 

And now, from a recollection of youthful reveries, 
we may look back and say : 

" I often used to wish, at eventide, 
I were a spirit free and glorified, 
Wandering through trackless ether at my will, 
And as the planet Mars shone bright and still 
I hailed its ruddy flame, and wished I were 
Midst its unvisioned realms a wanderer." 

" 0, God ! thy goodness everywhere I find — 
The space we think devoid of life is all 
One high celestial hall, 

Thronged by the deathless spirits of the free, 
Members of one sublime humanity." 



52 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



CHAPTER VI. 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT AND HEAT. 

That the sun, glowing with an indescribable bril- 
liancy, exceeding by millions on million-fold every 
other light that comes within the range of our vision, 
may be a heated body in a state of incandescence or 
glowing hydrogen will be readily admitted. But it is 
difficult to conceive how heat radiating from this 
central fire could reach and warm the planets without 
dissipating the nearer ones into a vaporous mass, and 
leaving the outer ones congealed in perpetual chains 
of frost and ice. The instruments that have been in- 
vented to estimate the intensity of solar heat have 
yielded no satisfactory results; and even if there 
had been a uniformity in the estimates of different 
observers, this would by no means prove that this 
heat was radiated directly from the sun. But the 
difference between the estimates of different philoso- 
phers is so great, both with regard to the intrinsic 
brilliancy of the sun, when compared with other bodies 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 53 

of the celestial sphere, as well as its radiated heat, that 
we are forced to the conclusion that no reliance can 
be placed on these estimates. 

The estimates of temperature on the surface of the 
sun, made by different astronomers, range from 3,000 
degrees (Fahrenheit) up to 50,000. Several estimate 
it as high as from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000, while 
Secchi contends for a temperature of 18,000,000 de- 
grees. Now, to keep up this enormous temperature, 
various estimates have been made of the amount of 
fuel that would be consumed in a given time; but these 
differ nearly as much as those made of the different 
degrees of temperature, so we may justly regard these 
estimates as mere conjectures, instead of scientific cal- 
culations. 

J. Norman Lockyer, an English astronomer, says 
of the sun's heat : u The heat thrown out from every 
square yard of the sun's surface is greater than that 
which would be produced by burning six tons of coal 
on it each hour. Now, we may take the surface of 
the sun roughly at 2,284,000,000,000 square miles, 
and there are 3,097,600 square yards in each square 
mile. How many tons of coal must be burned, there- 
fore, in an hour, to represent the sun's heat ? 

" But the sun sends out or radiates its light and 
heat in all directions. It is clear, therefore, that as 
our earth is so small compared with the sun, and it is 
so far away from it, the light and heat of the earth 
can intercept it but a very small portion of the whole 
amount; in fact, we only grasp the 2 .3oo,ooo,ooo P ar * 



54 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

of it. All the planets together receive but ^p^oqo 
part of the solar light and heat. 

" The whole heat of the sun collected on a mass of 
ice as large as the earth would be sufficient to melt it 
in two minutes, to boil the water thus produced in 
two minutes more, and to turn it all into steam in a 
quarter of an hour from the time it was first applied." 
After describing the energies of the sun as the pri- 
mary source of all motion, and locomotion as well, he 
asks this question : " Is the sun inhabited ?" and says : 
" This is a question more easily asked than answered. 
If the whole body of the sun is an incandescent globe, 
of course no organized beings of whom we can con- 
ceive can live upon it. But if the incandescence is 
confined to its photosphere, as many think, and the 
surface of the globe itself is protected from its outer 
envelope by a dense atmosphere, which absorbs its in- 
tense light and is at the same time a non-conductor ot 
heat, there is nothing to prevent it from being inhab- 
ited."* 

Similar opinions have been expressed by other 
astronomers in reference to the habitability of the sun ; 
but the commotions described by Mr. Proctor and 
others, as observed on the surface of the sun, would 
indicate the improbability of such an uproar occurring 
on the photosphere of the sun without affecting the 
internal globe. The combustion of cosmical matter, 
such as meteoric showers, as has been suggested, 
would entirely preclude the idea of a quiet globe for the 

* Lockyer's Elements of Astronomy, p. 66. 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 55 

habitation of 'life inside of this incandescent covering. 
But, on the assumption that the sun's photosphere is a 
glowing mass without material combustion, we might 
still conceive of some form of life in the sun. 

Mr. R. A. Proctor, in his lecture on the sun, 
as reported in the New York Tribune, Jan. 9th, 
1874, says : " The actual emission of solar light 
and heat corresponds to what would be obtained if on 
every square yard of the sun's surface six tons of coal 
were consumed every hour." Other astronomers es- 
timate from ten to ten and a half tons for the same 
space and time to keep up the solar temperature. 

Again he says : " The hideous groanings of the 
earthquake are surpassed a million-fold by the dis- 
turbance of every square mile on this inflamed sea. 
This is no idle dream. This great central . machine 
of the solar orb, the central heart, pulsates with life, 
and will continue to do so until the fuel is exhausted." 

He may well ask this significant question : " How 
does the sun maintain this fire?" To answer this, 
he notices two theories that have found strong ad- 
vocates among scientists. The one is that the heat 
is kept up by the downfall of meteoric matter, and the 
other by the gradual contraction of the substance of 
the sun, by which its heat is maintained — the same 
process, he says, by which the rest of the solar sys- 
tem was formed. 

Mr. Proctor evidently inclines to support this first 
theory, and utters the fearful prediction that u in any 
case there is certainly a time in the far future when 



56 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

the sun's heat will be exhausted," but suggests a way in 
which we may imagine that the perennial supply -will be 
continued. He tells us that our sun is traveling along 
through space, carrying with him the planets, the 
comets, etc., which circle around him as he sweeps 
onward, and it may be that he comes to new regions of 
meteoric matter, or, as it were, to "fresh fields and 
pastures new," where the supply may be renewed. But 
again he says "there is this process of exhaustion which 
may one day come to an end." This fancy picture of 
fresh fields and pastures new to feed the flames of the 
sun may be good poetry, but it is poor philosophy. 

Prof. Langly, whose distinguished services in the 
department of solar physics are so highly spoken of 
in Appleton's Journal, in a lecture on this subject, 
says " that a column of ice forty-five miles in diameter 
and reaching out into space to the lunar orb, so as to 
make a bridge to the moon, would, by the full force of 
solar heat, be melted and dissipated into vapor in less 
than a second of time." He also states "that all the 
coal beds of Pennsylvania would last considerably less 
than one-thousandth part of a second to keep up the 
present rate of emission of solar heat." 

These estimates run figures and fractions into in- 
finitesimals, and leave them meaningless. 

Prof. Langly adopts the theory, now advocated by 
a number of distinguished astronomers, that the sun's 
heat is " a mode of motion, itself renewed to a finite 
but almost inconceivable extent by the shrinking of 
its mass." 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 57 

" This," says the reporter of Mr. Langly's lecture, 
" may be accepted as the most reasonable theory re- 
garding the heat of the sun." It is well added, how- 
ever, by the same writer, that it is " yet possible that 
continued observation may bring to light facts that 
will call for a more satisfactory theory." Here we 
again have the same intimation of dissatisfaction 
and uncertainty so often expressed by writers on this 
subject. Other theories have been advocated by dis- 
tinguished names; among them is that one advanced 
by Sir Wm. Thompson, who is indorsed by Guillimin 
as a philosopher of great eminence. His views 
should therefore be entitled to respectful considera- 
tion. This eminent philosopher maintained, for some 
time at least, that the solar temperature was con- 
stantly sustained by meteoric and other bodies sur- 
rounding the sun producing heat by the immense force 
of concussion, on a much larger scale than Dr. Young's 
"spark from smitten steel or nitrous grain the blaze." 
To such an extent has this sublime folly been carried 
that estimates have been made of the amount of heat 
that would be developed at the sun's surface by the 
fall thereon of eight of our principal planets. Ac- 
cording to Sir Wm. Thompson's theory, the sun's 
heat would be kept up by the fall of Mercury, 6 
years and 214 days; Venus, 83 years and 227 
days ; Earth, 94 years and 303 days ; Mars, 12 
years and 252 days ; Jupiter, 32,240 years ; Saturn, 
9,650 years ; Uranus, 1,610 years ; Neptune, 1,890 
years. 



58 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

This theory is very evidently untenable, and no 
argument need be produced to show its fallacy. 

The sudden contact of such heavy bodies falling 
upon the sun without disturbing it in its orbit, and 
at the same time to produce such a flood of light and 
heat as comes to us with such uniforn flow and such 
penetrating power, without variation for thousands of 
years in succession, is contrary to all our conceptions of 
cause and effect in the production of these phenomena. 

Yet, wild as are these dreamings of philosophers, 
strange as are the contradictions and inconsistencies 
in which they are involved, they appear as plausible 
as the almost universally received theory of direct 
heat radiation from the solar orb, as a burning mass 
consuming crude substances. Now let us look, in the 
light of chemistry, at the conditions of an active com- 
bustion. Oxygen is necessary to sustain it; and where, 
according to nature's laws, is this supply to come from 
to maintain such an enormous fire ? 

Carbonic acid gas will be thrown off; and how is 
this to be disposed of? We know that in the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms there are certain laws of com- 
pensation, or of demand and supply. The ox feeds 
on the vegetation that manufactures oxygen gas. This 
gas sustains the life of the animal, which respires the 
carbonic acid gas that in turn feeds the growing vege- 
tation. It will, however, not be contended that Proc- 
tor's "fresh fields and pastures new" will need this 
supply of carbonic acid gas to make these fields grow 
and flourish. 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 59 

Again, in all ordinary combustion there will remain 
certain products, such as cinders, ashes, etc.; and how ar« 
these to be disposed of, resulting from a burning globe 
of nearly a million of miles in diameter, receiving a 
constant supply of fresh materials from surrounding 
space for thousands on thousands of years in succession? 

Again, if the solar orb is dependent for a constant 
supply of fresh materials, and is moving through 
space as a devouring monster, carrying with him his 
planets and their satellites, seeking for fresh supplies, 
and, according to Professor Langly, could gulp down 
into his rapacious maw all the coal fields of Pennsyl- 
vania in "considerable less than the one-thousandth 
part of a second," would there not be grounds to fear 
that the crop of meteoric supply might fail, and leave 
our earth by times without its ordinary supply of light 
and heat, from a want of a sufficient amount of fuel to 
feed this fire on the surface of the sun ? 

The amount of waste material on such an immense 
globe of fire would, in the course of time, result in an 
increase of volume as well as have a tendency to ex- 
tinguish these wondrous flames, neither of which have 
been detected from our earliest historic periods of 
observation. 

The discovery of Prof. Lockyer, by spectroscopic 
observation, of an immense stratum of hydrogen gas 
in an incandescent state, extending five thousand miles 
above the photosphere, would indicate a far less objec- 
tionable theory than either the meteoric or contraction 
and "mode of motion" theory. 



60 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

The commotions and sweeping storms that have been 
observed on the sun's surface are undoubtedly gov- 
erned by certain established laws, in which the latent 
powers of the different elementary principles are 
aroused to this high degree of activity, by which both 
light and heat may be produced. 

If the body of the sun is dark, and only surrounded 
by a luminous photosphere, and is endowed with a 
magnetism of vastly different degrees of intensity, we 
safely conclude that these magnetic currents will 
awaken storms that may rush from the equator to the 
poles, and, rebounding upon themselves and returning 
upon their own course, may alternately expose and 
again conceal from view the dark body of the sun, and 
on this hypothesis the sun spots of thousands of miles 
in extent may be accounted for. 

We have certain established laws that govern ter- 
restrial storms and tempests, and the operation of these 
laws does not produce a diminution of material forces. 
Our storms are as strong now T as they were thousands 
of years ago, and the same laws that have governed 
them in the past will cause them to sweep over earth 
and ocean for thousands of years to come. 

The storms that agitate the solar disc, and plunge 
anon into its deep abyss, and then again emerge to the 
surface thousands of miles away, must be endowed 
w T ith a magnetic force of a nature of which we can 
have but a very limited conception. 

Every writer of any notoriety on this subject, of late 
years, has given us different pictures of spots on the 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 61 

sun, produced from actual observation, and these 
pictures are as different as those produced by storm 
clouds. No two observers have seen them alike. We 
might as well expect to obtain a similarity in pictures 
of clouds agitated by whirlwinds, taken on different 
days and in different seasons of the year, as to find a 
similarity in sun-spots seen at different times. 

We have this further evidence of a constant com- 
motion on the surface of the sun from the different 
descriptions of different observers. Hence, we have 
the "willow-leaf and rice-grain" appearance; some 
again, compare it to granules ; one lady observer, 
from want of a proper name, represented the solar 
surface with " untidy circular masses," "things twice 
as long as broad;" while some observers have noticed 
spiral whirls, and sometimes "down rushes," and then, 
again, "up rushes," and lateral currents of a gaseous 
substance. 

Almost every imaginable form has been seen by dif- 
ferent astronomers at different times, indicating an up- 
roar compared with which all terrestrial tempests and 
tornadoes must be regarded as but gentle breezes of a 
summer's evening. There are no crude materials — 
such as terrestrial flames feed upon — consumed on its 
fair surface. This great central magnet has resources 
within itself, supplied by omnipotent power and di- 
rected by infinite wisdom, to furnish all the planets of 
our solar system with light and heat for all coming time. 

We may dismiss from our minds all fears that 
this great torch of the world may finally become 



62 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

extinguished from a want of fuel that blind chance 
may throw in its way, and leave our u icy earth swing 
blind and blackening in the moonless air." Magnet- 
ism and electricity, the twin sisters of gravitation, un- 
doubtedly play an important part in the production of 
solar light and heat, although their mysterious opera- 
tions upon the solar orb is, as yet, but imperfectly 
understood. 

Of one thing we may be certain, that as the power 
of gravitation by which the planets are held in their 
orbits is not diminished by time, neither will the elec- 
tric forces that direct and control the storms on the 
sun decay with age. No thoughtful mind can survey 
these displays of power, and the adaptation of their 
results to the necessities and for the comfort of intel- 
ligent beings, without being overwhelmed with amaze- 
ment at the splendor and glory of this bright lumi- 
nary and its influence upon the worlds around it. 
And although we do not understand all the laws that 
govern the phenomena of light and heat, there is no 
good reason why philosophers should tax our creduli- 
ty with statements that are contrary to all well-known 
laws of physical science. 

The supply of heat from the central sun appears 
to be the difficulty with astronomers. They view the 
sun as one great blast-furnace, fed by cosmical matter 
and throwing out its heat by radiation, warming 
space in every direction, while only a small part 
reaches the planets, and the rest is a waste of the 
energies produced by this enormous conflagration. 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 63 

In a recent publication on astronomy, by Professor 
Newcomb, we are told that by "the constant trans- 
formation of motion into heat and the constant loss of 
heat by radiation into space, a constant dissipation of 
energy is going on in nature;" and it is strongly inti- 
mated that this wasting process will go on until the 
machinery of our solar system is run down and the 
worlds depending for life on the central suns will die 
out from want of a supply of heat. 

The comparison of systems of worlds with machin- 
ery that may wear out, or a clock-work that may run 
down and come to a stand-still, has concealed in it a 
hypothesis that ignores all creative energy and strikes 
a death blow at the whole fabric of the universe. It 
would be strange if a man that made a clock and set 
it agoing could not wind it up, or the man that con- 
structed a machinery or mechanical contrivance could 
not keep it in motion. Through the death of a con- 
triver some secret of the contrivance might be lost, 
and a stopping of the machinery might be the result. 
But we have an omnipotent hand at the head of af- 
fairs, and this talk about wasting energies in nature 
amounts to nothing more than a hypothesis that, by 
some fortuitous movement of nebulous matter or fire- 
mist, worlds were rolled into being, and that the chance 
that brought them up will allow them to run down 
again, without a power to perpetuate their existence 
by a constant supply of energies. 

From the views entertained of a solar fire fed by 
cosmical matter, or the shrinking of the sun in a 



64 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

gradual process of diminishing force, there is only 
one conclusion, and this is irresistible: the power will 
be exhausted, the supply of fuel will fail, or the solar 
orb will be diminished to a point where it will cease to 
throw off heat sufficient to sustain life on the earth, 
and our world would naturally die out. Behind all 
these speculations about nature's powers becoming 
exhausted, and our earth, and with it our whole solar 
system, slowly yet surely running to a final decay and 
death, there is concealed a materialistic philosophy 
which ignores an infinite power, and which seeks to 
account for the origin, progress and final change of a 
phenomenal universe by blind chance. The same law 
by which our solar system would finally fall back into 
primitive chaos would apply to all sun systems, and 
there would be no stability in the universe. To show 
the tendency of this materialistic philosophy, I will 
quote at length from Professor Simon Newcomb's 
recent work on astronomy. His views may be re- 
garded as the latest expression of science on this sub- 
ject. Under the head of " Progressive changes in our 
system"* he says: "Suppose an inquiring person 
walking in what he supposed to be a deserted building 
to find a clock running. If he is ignorant of mechan- 
ics, he will see no reason why it may not have been 
running, just as he now sees it, for an indefinite 
period, and why the pendulum may not continue to 
vibrate and the hands to go through their revolutions 
so long as the fabric shall stand. He sees a continu- 

* Popular Astronomy, p. 409. 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 65 

ous cycle of motion, and can give no reason why they 
should not have been going on since the clock was 
created, and continue to go on till it shall decay. But 
let him be instructed in the laws of mechanics, and 
let him inquire into the force which keeps the hands 
and pendulum in motion. He will find that this force 
is transmitted to the pendulum through a train of 
wheels, each of which moves many times slower than 
that in front of it, and that the first wheel is acted 
upon by weights with which it is connected by a cord. 
He can see a slow motion in the wheel which acts 
upon the pendulum, and perhaps in the one next behind 
it, while during the short time he has for examination 
he can see no motion in the others. But if he sees 
how the wheels act on each other, he will know that 
they must all be in motion; and when he traces the 
motion back to the first wheel, he sees that its motion 
must be kept up by a gradual falling of the weight, 
though it seems to remain in the same position. He 
can then say with certainty, "I do not see this weight 
move, but it must be gradually approaching the bot- 
tom, because I see a system of moving machinery, the 
progress of which necessarily involves such a slow 
falling of the weight. Knowing the number of teeth 
in each wheel and pinion, I can compute how many 
inches it falls each day ; and seeing how much room 
it has to fall in, I can tell how many days it will take 
to reach the bottom. When this is done, I see the 
clock must stop, because it is only the falling of the 
weight that keeps its pendulum in motion. Moreover, 



66 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

I see that the weight must have been higher yester- 
day than it is to-day, and yet higher the day before, 
so that I can calculate its position backward as well 
as forward. By this calculation I see backward to a 
time when the weight was at the top of its course, 
higher than which it could not be. Thus, although I 
see no motion, I see with the eye of reason that the 
weight is running through a certain course from the 
top of the clock to the bottom ; that some power must 
have wound it up and started it; and that unless the 
same power intervenes again the weight must reach 
the bottom in a certain number of days, and the clock 
must then stop." That our solar system is kept in 
motion by arrangements and laws that rival the finest 
mechanical contrivance ever witnessed by men is very 
evident from Kepler's three astronomical laws, but 
that these laws are subject to the same process of 
running down like a clock may well be doubted. 
Any of the mechanical powers known to science may 
be put into operation, by which a force is produced in 
intensity and duration in accordance with the power 
applied; but the power can only manifest itself in 
force as long as there is a propelling or driving con- 
trivance behind it. Finite powers can only produce 
limited effects. Infinite power knows no exhaustion, 
and hence to talk of "the waste of natures forces" 
is to limit the resources of infinite creative energy. 

But let us look further at this theory of " dissipa- 
tion of energy." Professor Newcomb says, p. 500 : 

" The corresponding progressive change exhibited 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAPv LIGHT. 67 

by the operations of nature consists in a constant 
transformation of motion into heat, and the constant 
loss of heat by radiation into space. As Sir William 
Thompson has expressed it ? a constant ' dissipation of 
energy ' is going on in nature. We all know that the 
sun has been radiating heat into space during the 
whole course of his existence. A small portion of 
this heat strikes the earth, and supports life and mo- 
tion on its surface." I have already, in part, given 
my views on the subject of heat radiation from the 
sun, and will here offer additional remarks. The 
mistake with those who maintain that heat radiates 
directly from the sun, as heat, consists in giving to 
heat an entity, consisting of something imperishable, 
something that can actually exist when the cause by 
which it is produced is withdrawn, or like an insect 
that lies torpid through the cold and dreary winter 
and awakes to life in the spring. Heat is not pos- 
sessed of any of the properties of matter, nor spirit. 
It does not "slumber in a dreamless bed" in cold 
space to come to life again. It is not found outside 
or separate from the coordinate forces by which it is 
produced. It is the effect of force, and when the force 
ceases to exist in any given direction it dies ; and 
when force again manifests itself a new supply of heat 
is evolved, not the identical heat that existed under a 
previous force, and died a quiet, natural death, because 
that on which its existence depended was taken away 
and it breathed its last. As long as it does exist it 
will produce certain effects that unmistakably indicate 



68 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

its presence. Now, let us imagine two of these philoso- 
phers, who contend for the radiation of heat from the 
sun through cold space, to make the following experi- 
ment : Let them get into a large, well inflated balloon, 
on a warm summer day. Their friends, standing by as 
spectators, might suggest to the gentlemen the pro- 
priety of taking along some extra clothing ; they might 
find the air chilly up toward the clouds. No, says one 
to the other, we are philosophers. We know that the 
sun is a burning mass. Does not Mr. Proctor tell us it 
is going through "fresh fields and pastures new" con- 
suming all the meteors that come in its reach ; and are 
we not going right up toward the sun ? Does not our 
philosophy tell us that heat diminishes as the square 
of the distance increases from the sun ? We'll have it 
quite warm up there. But, just before the rope is cut 
loose to let the balloon fly, along comes an old farmer 
and cries out, " See here, gentlemen, you had better 
take your overcoats along. You'll catch cold ; it's 
always cold on high mountains." "Who is that? " in- 
quires one of the philosophers. " It's an old farmer," 
shouts one, from the crowd. " What does he know ? " 
responds the philosopher. " We know that the sun is 
hot. Our reasoning is philosophical ; the old farmer's 
is empirical. We cannot stop to argue this with em- 
pirics. Cut the rope, and we will be off." They 
start amid the cheers of the crowd, and the old farm- 
er gravely says : " Those fellows will want their over- 
coats before long." " Up they go !" "A grand bal- 
loon !" " How beautifully she rides !" say some 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 69 

among the gazing crowd. But how is it with the 
philosophers by the time they are two miles up ? 

We will suppose, for the sake of illustration, that 
the two philosophers are Tyndall and Proctor, as these 
are two of the most distinguished scientists of our day, 
and I mention their names with veneration and respect. 
We may imagine Tyndall to say to Proctor : 

" It is getting quite cool. I wish I had brought 
my overcoat." 

"Yes," replies Mr. P. "I delivered a lecture in 
New York on the sun's heat, and when I talked about 
the sun as a rapacious monster, consuming the mete- 
ors just as the whale gulps down the little fish that 
come in his way, the audience cheered me lustily ; 
but, really, it does not appear that there is much heat 
here now.'' 

Mr. T. replies : " I was once on Mt. Blanc, and 
stood waist-deep in the snow, and the sun was very hot. ' ' 

"But," interrupts Mr. P., "did you ever hear of 
any one else nearly suffocating with heat on the top of 
snow-clad mountains ? " 

"No," was the reply; "but, then, you know, we 
believe and teach that the sun warms the earth by 
direct heat radiation, and that is our philosophy. 
But, really, this is getting awful cold up here." 

"Well," says Mr. P., "did you not publish in one 
of your scientific works that the atmosphere of the 
planets outside of the earth's orbit might be provided 
with barbs to catch the heat as it came down from the 
sun, and hold it and prevent its returning into space ?" 



70 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

" I did publish such an idea," replied Mr. T., "and 
you took my idea and applied it to Mercury and 
Venus, only you turned the barbs in the other direc- 
tion, so as to keep the heat out. My arrangement 
was a trap to catch the heat and hold it, and yours 
was to keep it out. But, really," says Mr. T., gravely, 
" if there is such a thing as catching heat and hold- 
ing it, I wish I had brought with me a bag full — an 
air-tight india-rubber bag full, I mean." 

"But," replied Mr. P., "this is really getting to 
be a serious affair. Have you any brandy with you — 
any Cayenne pepper — anything under the sun to 
warm us? My nose and ears are frost-bitten." 

"So are mine," replies Mr. T. "The sun shines 
beautifully ; we must be above the region of the 
clouds. By the way, have you seen Professor New- 
comb's new work on popular astronomy ? He says 
4 the stars radiate heat as well as the sun.' " 

" I begin to see stars," says Mr. T. 

" So do I." replies Mr. P. " 0, for a trap to catch 
some of this radiated heat !" 

"Well, this philosophy about catching heat," says 
Mr. T., " looks well enough in theory, but I doubt 
whether it is practical." 

" But, is it not provoking, with all this sunshine, 
that we cannot get a little heat out of these descending 
beams?" Mr. P. replies. "Something must be done 
soon, or we perish. I recollect of hearing a man in 
Chicago say that heat did not radiate from the sun ; 
but by the passage of rays of sunlight through the 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 71 

atmosphere, acting upon it as a lens and crowding the 
rays into a smaller compass, heat was evolved." 

" Why have we not thought of this before ?" replied 
Mr. T. "I have with me my large lens. ' Let us try 
it." So, holding it to the sun, soon there was a glow 
of warmth ; an intense heat follows. 

" Here, hold it over my ear," says Mr. P. 

"Wait till I get my nose thawed out," replies 
Mr. T.; "and we had better open the valve and try 
to get down." 

On the way down, says Mr. P.: "After all, is it 
possible for heat to come ninety millions of miles 
through cold space and warm the earth ?" 

"Well," answers Mr. T., "that is the theory, but 
theory is one thing and facts another thing ; and I do 
not see how heat can come through such cold regions 
and warm the earth. I will reconsider my barbed 
atmosphere theory." 

"Well," replies Mr. P., "I will reconsider mine. 
The whole difficulty is solved by allowing that the 
earth's atmosphere acts upon the rays of light, and 
this produces heat ; and, on this theory, every planet 
in our solar system may have a sufficient supply of 
heat to sustain life. Is it not singular that this truth 
in solar physics has not been discovered before?" 

We may imagine that the two distinguished gentle- 
men, on returning home, would revise their theories 
of heat radiation direct from the sun. One thing is 
certain, if those who contend so strongly that heat is 
radiated from the sun to the earth through cold space 



72 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

could make such a trip as I have imagined, they would 
come down wiser than they were when they went up. 

I proceed to notice Professor Newcomb's theory on 
this subject. He says : 

" The stars radiate heat as well as the sun. The 
heat received from them, when condensed in the focus 
of a telescope, has been rendered sensible by the ther- 
mo-multiplier, and there is every reason to believe that 
stellar heat and light bear the same proportion to each 
other that solar heat and light do. Wherever there is 
white stellar light, there must be stellar heat ; and as 
we have found that the stars in general give more light 
than the sun, we have reason to believe that they give 
more heat also. Thus, we have a continuous radiation 
from all the visible bodies of the universe, which must 
have been going on from the beginning." 

Now, if Professor Newcomb had said stellar light 
contains properties out of which heat may be evolved, 
" when condensed in the focus of a telescope," he 
would have been philosophically correct. But when 
he says heat is radiated to our planet from a distant 
star, he represents a thing as existing that has no ex- 
istence. When he speaks of a " continuous heat radi- 
ation from all visible bodies of the universe," he only 
represents the material diffused through the universe 
that will produce heat when properly acted upon by 
arrangements made by infinite wisdom. This heat 
producing fuel, shot out into space from all luminous 
bodies in which it has been stored up by infinite crea- 
tive power, assures us that all worlds may be warmed 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 73 

in the same manner that our world is. These rays of 
light, in their passage through space, are as cold as 
the coal* fields under the mountains ; and as our fuel 
only warms our dwellings when placed in certain con- 
ditions, so these rays of light only warm our earth 
when kindled into a radiant glow through the refractor 
ordained by Infinite Wisdom. 

But the most startling announcement yet made is 
the following, by Professor Newcomb, on page 501. 
He says : 

" Until quite recently, it was not known that this 
radiation involved the expenditure of something neces- 
sarily limited in supply, and, consequently, it was not 
known but that it might continue forever, without any 
loss of power on the part of the sun and stars/ 

" But it is now known that heat cannot be produced 
except by the expenditure of force, actual or poten- 
tial, in some of its forms. And it is also known that 
the available supply of force is necessarily limited." 

With such announcement from such high scientific 
authority we might well exclaim : 

" 0, star-eyed Science ! hast thou wandered there 
To waft to us the message of despair ?" 

Professor Newcomb continues, on this subject, by 
saying : 

" One of the best-established doctrines of modern 
science is, that force can no more be produced from 
nothing than matter can. To find it so produced 
Tvould be as great a miracle as to see a globe created 



74 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

before our eyes. Hence, this radiation cannot go on 
forever, unless the force expended in producing the 
heat be returned to the sun in some form. That it is 
not now so returned we may regard as morally cer- 
tain." 

The fallacy of the argument consists in giving an 
independent existence to heat and force, as well as to 
matter. The latter contains parts and particles which 
no change of form can destroy, while the former are 
only effects produced by material action and contain 
none of the properties of matter. To illustrate : If 
I give a hungry man his dinner, he receives a supply 
of a material substance that goes to nourish his body. 
If I warm him by my fire, he receives only an im- 
pression from a force produced by the combustion go- 
ing on in the stove or grate. When he leaves the 
warm room, the material substance taken into his 
stomach remains, to undergo the necessary changes to 
nourish his body. The heat has no farther effect on 
him; it has no identical existence; it is not a thing, 
but the effect of things combined. 

But Professor Newcomb inquires : " Since, then, 
the solar heat does not return to the sun 3 what be- 
comes of it, and whether a compensation may not at 
some time be effected whereby all the lost heat will 
be received back again?" 

Why not inquire, with equal propriety, what be- 
comes of all the lost wind ? Is the gentle breeze that 
fans us in the summer's evening, or the sweeping 
tornado, lost forever? Yes, just as the heat is lost. 



DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SOLAR LIGHT. 75 

When the cause that produced them is withdrawn 
they simply cease their manifestation. 

Heat is not stored away in central suns, to be dis- 
tributed through space until the supply is exhausted ; 
but the materials from which it may be evolved are 
found everywhere, and these materials cannot be an- 
nihilated nor destroyed through all the transforma- 
tions to which they may be subjected, and, conse- 
quently, we have an unending supply from an infinite 
source. 



76 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOLAR LIGHT AND HEAT THE SOURCE OF ALL VITAL- 
IZING ENERGIES UNDER THE CONTROL 
OF NATURE'S LAWS. 

Nature's operations are marvelous, and the con- 
stant recurrence of her wonderful phenomena should 
make them none the less interesting to the attentive 
observer of her laws. 

They give evidence of an infinitely wise designer, 
and an execution of these designs with a wonderful 
exactness and regularity. By the operation of na- 
ture's laws, chaotic masses in their wildest confusion 
are transformed into order, and harmony, and beauty. 
It is not only in the harmonious movement of worlds 
around their centers of gravity, nor in those more po- 
tent agents of nature, such as wind, fire and water, but 
also in the more silent chambers of nature's wondrous 
movements, that we see the works of an almighty 
hand. Here we find innumerable chemical combina- 
tions and transmutations running their ceaseless rounds 



SOLAR LIGHT AND HEAT. 77 

in working out the plans of Infinite Wisdom. So far 
as these operations concern our earth and the other 
planets of our solar system, the sun is the central 
power that keeps the rolling orbs in motion and pro- 
duces the changes that aVe constantly occurring on 
each respective planet. It is to this family of worlds 
what the great central engine was to the complicated 
machinery of our Centennial Exhibition. With its 
magnetic belts it reaches from this center of gravity 
to the different and most distant planets, and holds 
them by the mighty grasp of its attraction, while even 
the erratic comet, plunging for many billions of miles 
into the depths of space, is subject to its sway. 

From this central source of power there issue not 
only magnetic belts to hold and to drive, but also elec- 
tric currents and vitalizing forces that extend to 
every part where life is possible ; and when nature's 
products are exhibited to the admiring gaze of intelli- 
gent beings, in any part of God's universe, it will be 
found that where the conditions have been favorable 
all forms of animal and vegetable life measure up to 
the standard of original types. 

Flowers, fruits and seeds are spun and woven by 
sunbeams, and then they are colored, pressed and fin- 
ished up in perfect style in nature's extensive manu- 
facturing establishment. 

As in mechanical operations many hands are often 
employed to produce the different parts of a complete 
whole, so nature works through different channels to 
supply the million forms of life that may exist in the 



78 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

different parts of her vast dominion. Every channel 
through which nutritious particles flow derives its 
supply from sunbeams. The propelling force that 
moves the precious freight to build up living struct- 
ures is also derived from this central engine of 
power. Then, again, there are sentinels to guard these 
millions of highways — regular custom-house officers 
in their way, allowing nothing contraband to enter 
these channels, nothing poisonous to go up along the 
line where freight is carried to build up the apple, the 
peach, the orange and other delicious and wholesome 
fruits. The materials that make the wheat and the 
corn, and other valuable grains, have their peculiar 
channels guarded with an unerring skill, so that 
no noxious and poisonous particles shall enter into that 
which was designed for the support of human life. If 
nature worked at random and outside of well defined 
laws and plans, our grain might lose its nourishing 
qualities, our fruits their flavor, the rose its sweet- 
ness, the lily its whiteness, and the birds of the forest 
their beautiful plumage and melodious songs. There 
would be a strange mixing of species, so that original 
types would soon be lost in the wild confusion. It is, 
then, from nature's inexplicable operation, wrought 
out in her multitudinous laboratories, through the 
agency of solar light and heat, that we have what is 
delicious to the taste, pleasant to the sight and harmo- 
nious to the ear. But let us approach as near as her 
inexorable laws will allow, and watch with a scrutin- 
izing eye the admirable contrivance of the channels 



SOLAR LIGHT AND HEAT. 79 

through -which materials flow for building up new 
structures and furnishing them with their needed 
supply. 

We may understand this better by personifying 
these agencies of nature as workers in the different 
departments assigned to them. The dry grains of 
wheat put into the ground might slumber there for 
ages if it were not for nature's forces producing power 
to awaken their latent energies, so as to bring out of 
a comparatively small number of grains a multiplied 
supply for the support of life. The first step in the 
process of growth is the descending shower. But the 
shower is begotten of the sunbeams. The rays of 
light shot out from the central orb fall upon oceans, 
lakes and rivers, and from these broad sheets of water 
they gently and silently lift up a supply, out of which 
rain clouds are formed. By nature's inimitable chem- 
istry the lime and various salts that combine with the 
water are separated and left out, and nothing but the 
pure, soft, nutritious rain water is allowed to float in the 
cloud chariots that carry it to. the waiting grain. 
Then, after sunbeams have gathered up the water, 
separated innutritious properties from it, and then 
heated the air in distant localities, by which vacuums 
are produced and wind currents started up to drive 
the cloud with its precious freight of rain, which is 
gently distilled upon the ground, the first condition 
for growth is accomplished. 

The next thing required is light and warmth from 
the sun. These same sunbeams that first lifted the- 



80 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

moisture from the "water, and produced the condition 
for the transportation of clouds over forest and field, 
now come with their different properties to give vital- 
ity to the apparently lifeless and dry grain of wheat, 
we will say, for the sake of illustration. 

Now comes another set of nature's active working 
forces to arrange the materials for growth in their 
proper order. The roots must have their direction 
downward ; the stalk must spring upward. A mis- 
take here would derange the whole process. 

The next order of nature is that the young and 
growing stalk shall be green ; and sunshine has in it 
a beautiful green color ; but how can it be extracted ? 
The process is interesting and beautiful, and operates 
with a mathematical certainty. The materials in the 
growing stalk are so arranged that all the colors of 
sunlight are absorbed, except the green, and that is 
reflected and shows itself on the surface. 

The little rootlets soon reach out their tiny fingers 
to gather up material from the soil for the growth of 
the stock. These materials flow in these regular 
channels until other supplies are called for. The 
material that makes the stalk grow will not form the 
ear nor produce the shell that is to hold the coming 
grain ; neither will it produce the beautiful little blos- 
som that foretells its coming. 

This new material is furnished from the soil, and 
the blossom shoots out, under which a white, milky 
substance is formed. This would soon be wasted 
by evaporation or fall to pieces, and hence a new 



SOLAR LIGHT AND HEAT. 81 

substance must come up through the main channel to 
form the shell for the precious accumulation that 
makes the staff of life. The shell is formed around 
the grain for its protection, and when this is taken off 
by the grinding process it makes a nourishing food 
for lower animals, while the fine flour supplies the 
wants of a hungry world. 

No less harmonious are the operations of nature in 
forming the flowers with their fragrance and beautiful 
colors, and the fruits with their delicious flavors, in 
almost endless varieties. 

Not only is man provided for in nature's vast store- 
house, but also the million forms of life found on the 
earth, in the air and in the ocean are cared for and 
have their supplies adapted to their wants. The He- 
brew poet sings : " 0, Lord, how manifold are thy 
works ; in wisdom hast thou made them all ; the earth 
is full of thy riches." " So is this great and wide 
sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both 
small and great beasts." " These wait all upon thee, 
that thou mayst give them their meat in due season : 
thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good." 

To exclude from the conscious soul the idea of an 
infinite intelligence over all these complicated move- 
ments in the material universe is an act of violence to 
the inward consciousness among all nations, whether 
savage or civilized. There rests a deep conviction 
upon every human soul that there exists in the universe 
a supreme and overruling power, directing and con- 
trolling material powers. This conviction brings 



82 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

with it a sense of dependence upon this higher power 
and an assurance that, in some way by laws estab- 
lished in infinite wisdom, our wants will be supplied. 
Upon this follows not only a willingness, but a univer- 
sally expressed desire, to approach this divine being, 
and to make offerings and pay homage to Him who 
causeth His sun to shine upon the just and upon the 
unjust. 

The Psalmist saw the sun as a " bridegroom com- 
ing out of his chamber and rejoicing as a strong man 
to run a race." 

Another poet, who did not claim divine inspiration, 
said: 

" Till as a giant strong, a bridegroom gay, 
The sun springs dancing through the gates of day, 
He shakes his dewy locks and hurls his beams 
O'er the proud hills and down the glowing streams, 
His fiery coursers bound above the main, 
And whirl the car along the ethereal plain ; 
The fiery courser and the car display 
A stream of glory and a flood of day." 



DISTRIBUTION OF SOLAR HEAT. 83 



CHAPTER VIII. 



DISTRIBUTION OF SOLAR HEAT TO THE PLANETS. 

Mr. R. A. Proctor, in his "Myths and Marvels of 
Astronomy," says : " Continually we hear of some 
new paradoxist who propounds as a novel doctrine the 
teaching that the atmosphere, and not the sun, is the 
cause of solar heat." When Mr. Proctor was in 
Chicago, lecturing on astronomy, I propounded sev- 
eral questions to him in reference to the cause of solar 
heat as we have it on the earth, varying as it does in 
different degrees of intensity in the different seasons 
of the year, and being at its highest intensity when 
the sun is farthest from us, or, more properly, 
when the earth is at its farthest point of its orbit from 
the sun. One of my questions was : How can heat 
come from the sun by direct radiation to the different 
planets for many millions of miles, through space 
colder than anything known to us on the earth ? This 
question he was not disposed to answer. He could 
not do it on the theory of heat radiation from the sun. 



84 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

Theories may be plausible on paper, but facts are 
stubborn things. Now, the theory most commonly 
entertained and advocated is that the sun is an incan- 
descent body, with its heat kept up by combustion of 
some meteoric or cosmic matter falling upon its sur- 
face, or, as some later writers contend, that the heat 
is produced by a contraction of the substance of the 
sun upon itself, producing heat by a "mode of mo- 
tion." Against these theories, and all others that 
heat, as such, that is, sensible or perceptible heat, is 
radiated from the sun to the different planets and di- 
minishes in intensity as the square of the distance in- 
creases from the sun, I reply : This is simply a 
physical impossibility. You might as well attempt to 
warm your neighbor's house, five or ten miles away 
from you, by building an intensely hot fire in your 
own house, while a fierce wind was prevailing be- 
tween the two houses and the thermometer ranging 
30° to 40° below zero. This is not an exaggerated 
nor unfair statement of the case, and the following 
facts cannot be successfully controverted nor denied, 
nor can they be disproven by any appeal to known 
laws of physical science : 

1. The space between the sun and the earth is cold 
beyond anything we can conceive on this earth. 

2. Heat from an incandescent body does not radiate 
through space equivalent to light. A burning lamp that 
will burn your hand at the distance of one inch will 
not affect the most delicate thermometer at a distance 
of ten feet, yet the light may be seen five miles off. 



DISTRIBUTION OF SOLAR HEAT. 85 

3. Radiated heat cannot pass through cold space 
and manifest itself merely by impinging on a solid 
surface, not even in a vertical descent, as under the 
equator, as is proven by the perpetual snow upon the 
high mountains everywhere. 

4. Heat is not an entity, with an independent exist- 
ence separate and apart from its co-ordinate forces. 

5. Solar rays shot out from the central sun become 
intensely heated when acted upon mechanically, as is 
demonstrated by the action of the lens. 

6. The earth's atmosphere is a concavo-convex lens, 
and as such it acts upon the rays of light passing 
through it, and in this way heat becomes a mode or man- 
ifestation of motion. Friction will produce heat, and 
the action of the lens upon the rays of light, crowding 
them into a smaller space, produces an excitement or 
friction, out of which heat is evolved. It is unphilo- 
sophical to speak of latent heat, or heat concealed in 
everything. It has no substance, and only manifests 
itself, under certain conditions, through chemical or 
mechanical action, or other co-ordinate forces ; hence, 
we might as well talk of latent force as latent heat. 
There can be no such thing as unfelt force, neither 
can there be heat where there is no perceptible mani- 
festation of it. There can be no concealed light ex- 
isting independently, yet it may be instantly produced 
by chemical or mechanical action. There may be 
innate power, or concealed power, always ready to 
produce force. Morally speaking, as well as figura- 
tively, we may say a man has force of character, or, 



86 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

in other words, he has a character that may manifest 
itself in force. 

Now, the earth's atmosphere has a power to divert 
a ray of light from its course, and to crowd the 
numerous rays that fall upon it into a smaller com- 
pass, and this force produces heat. 

But, say the advocates of direct heat radiation from 
the sun, " the heat is in the rays of light, and only 
manifests itself when it impinges on a solid surface." 
To this we reply that the solid surface is found on the 
highest mountains under the direct rays of the sun, 
and yet these mountains are covered with perpetual 
frost and snow. The absence of heat is caused by 
the rarity of the atmosphere, and consequently its 
limited refracting power. As the density of the at- 
mosphere increases nearer the earth its refracting 
power increases, and this increased force on the rays 
of light produces an increase of heat. 

What are the facts in this case proven by actual 
experiments ? The rays of light from the sun pass- 
ing directly through a lens made of solid ice will set 
fire to any combustible material in the coldest winter 
day as quickly as passing through warm glass lens 
in a hot summer day, and while the fire is kindled 
at the focus of the ice lens there is not the least indi- 
cation of thawing or melting on the part of the lens. 
The same is true in a lens of cold water, as the follow- 
ing experiments will show : I have placed a concavo- 
convex glass in both ends of a tin tube three inches 
long and two inches in diameter, then filled the tube 



DISTRIBUTION OF SOLAR HEAT. 87 

with ice-cold water, and then allowing the rays of 
sunlight to pass directly through the water, and pla- 
cing the bulb of a thermometer at a proper distance, 
would raise the mercury from fifteen to eighteen de- 
grees, without in the least affecting the temperature 
of the water ; while at the same time changing the 
position of the water lens, so that the rays of sunlight 
would strike it obliquely, would cause the mercury 
to sink ten to fifteen degrees. 

Now, the atmosphere that surrounds our earth is in 
the form of a concavo-convex lens. The aqueous 
vapor in the upper regions of the atmosphere is in- 
tensely cold, yet, acting on the rays of light like a 
cold water lens, produces heat ; and here is the secret 
of solar temperature on the earth, and the change in 
temperature is caused by the varying angles at which 
the solar rays strike the atmosphere. 

I repeat, it cannot be denied that refraction of the 
rays of light will produce heat. The heat at the focus 
of a 32-inch lens exceeds almost every kind and in- 
tensity of heat known to terrestrial chemistry. Again, 
it cannot be denied that the earth's atmosphere is a 
refracting medium, and that as such it is capable of 
producing heat from rays of light. 

Now, what are the interesting conclusions we may 
draw from this theory of solar heat ? It will at once 
open to us wider fields for the play of heat and cold 
on the different planets of the solar system, and de- 
liver us from the strange paradox of heat radiating 
for many millions of miles through cold space, and 



88 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

manifesting itself by its own innate power in regions 
beyond the cold through which it has come. 

I know that these views come in conflict with old 
and apparently well established theories in solar phys- 
ics, but I am also aware that scientists are constantly 
contradicting each other in this very subject of solar 
heat Mr. Whewell thinks the earth occupies the only 
zone in the solar system where a temperature to sup- 
port animal life is possible. Tyndall thinks the outer 
planets may be provided with a barbed atmosphere to 
hold the heat after it passes through and prevent its 
escape from the planet. Proctor thinks that the 
nearer planets may have the barbs of their atmosphere 
turned in the other direction to prevent an improper 
amount of heat from coming down upon the surface 
of the planet. I do not believe that barbs can guard 
against heat, nor catch it and hold it. Fish and other 
animals may be caught in this way, but heat cannot. 
Prof. Mitchell says : 4 We are compelled to acknowl- 
edge that up to the present time science has rendered 
no satisfactory account of the origin of solar light and 
heat Whence comes the exhaustless supply scattered 
so lavishly into space we know not. Doubtless the 
time will come when these phenomena will be ex- 
plained. Persevering and well directed effort will, in 
the end. criumph." 

We may say, with regard to these conflicting views 
on scientific subjects, what Jonathan Edwards said on 
questions of theology, " He who believes principles 
because our forefathers affirmed them makes idols of 



DISTRIBUTION OF SOLAR HEAT. 89 

them, and it would be no humility, but baseness of 
spirit, for us to judge ourselves incapable of examining 
principles which have been handed down to us." Old 
theories in astronomy, and on other subjects, hoary 
with age and venerable from the distinguished names 
that supported them, have been compelled to yield to 
new discoveries; and so long as learned men cannot 
positively agree on the mere hypothetical theories ad- 
vanced by one and condemned by another, the field 
may be considered, open for new suggestions. 

I do not, however, " propound as a novel doctrine 
that the atmosphere is the cause of solar heat," as Mr. 
Proctor says ; but I do say that as soon as the bright 
beams from old Sol kiss the round face of our fair 
world there is caused a blush which sends a glow of 
warmth to every living thing on the earth. It is the 
action of the atmosphere that produces the heat from 
the sunbeams, and not the atmosphere itself. 



90 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



CHAPTER IX. 



ANALOGIES IN NATURE. 



With this view of the cause of solar beat, we have 
a central sun to meet the wants of all the planets and 
their satellites, with different degrees, varying from 
heat to cold, according to the construction of their 
atmosphere. If the sunbeams falling on a 32-inch 
lens can collect the rays of light so as to produce a 
sufficient heat to melt the hardest metals into invisible 
gases in a few minutes, why may not Infinite Wisdom 
have constructed atmospheres around each planet, so 
as to concentrate the rays to a proper temperature for 
the peculiar kind of animal or vegetable life that may 
exist on them? 

With an increase of aqueous vapor, pure and free 
from gases that obstruct the rays of light, the farthest 
planet from the sun may kindle a heat from the feeble 
light that falls upon that distant world, so as to shed 
a glow of warmth on its different zones, and make 
the whole planet a temperate abode for life 



ANALOGIES IN NATURE. 91 

The question is not so much, nor so important, about 
the kind of life — whether in form and intellectual en- 
dowments it exceeds our earth life or is inferior — but 
is there life there under any condition, or is it a life- 
less solitude? Do these mighty orbs move majestic- 
ally around their orbits, accompanied by their moons, 
rising, culminating and going down with a regularity 
rivaling the best chronometers in the world, only to 
be gazed at by a few astronomers, while perpetual 
solitude reigns surpreme through all these dreary 
wastes ? 

The analogies in nature, as stated in other parts of 
this work, point strongly to the great truth that we 
are contending for. Some of the wisest men the 
Christian church and the world have known have 
expressed themselves in favor of a plurality of worlds 
of life. Sir. David Brewster says : 

"There is no subject within the whole range of 
knowledge so universally interesting as that of a plu- 
rality of worlds. It commands the sympathies and 
appeals to the judgment of men of all nations, of all 
creeds, and of all times ; and no sooner do we com- 
prehend the few simple facts on which it rests than 
the mind rushes instinctively to embrace it." 

The vastness of the universe forbids the thought 
that all should be a solitary waste except this little 
world in which we live. 

We may draw a comparison that will illustrate this 
idea. We will suppose a number of insects of a few 
days' existence found their home in one single apple 



92 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

on a large apple tree, and that there were hundreds of 
other apples of different sizes and qualities on the same 
tree, each of them containing different forms of insect 
life. 

And suppose in one of the smallest apples on the 
tree these insects were endowed with intelligence suf- 
ficient to look out from their apple home and to see 
other apples on the same tree. And suppose, again, 
they had among them some insects smarter than the 
rest — little Newtons or Galileos and Herschels, in 
their way — and suppose these wise ones would tell 
the rest of their tribe that some of these apples were 
much larger and more beautiful than their own home. 
They might readily come to the conclusion that out- 
side of their own small apple no life could exist, be- 
cause everything there was adapted to their wants, 
and all other apples must be regarded a? ornamental 
appendages to their little home. But suppose, further, 
that these little fellows had the most positive proof 
that outside of the orchard to which their tree be- 
longed there were numerous other orchards, forming 
groups and clusters of trees to an unlimited extent. 
Would not their little brains be puzzled to know why 
this wonderful number of trees were laden with apples, 
if they were not intended as homes for other living 
creatures ? 

Still, somo of the wisest among this insect tribe 
might get up an argument against life on any other 
apple world, from the fact that they occupied only a 
small part of their territory. They might conclude 



ANALOGIES IN NATURE. 93 

that if their apple was not all occupied there could 
be no good reason why others should be; and as for 
the other trees on other orchards beyond theirs, they 
might be considered too far away in space to disturb 
them in their own home. 

Here is where Whewell's argument from designs in 
nature against the habitability of the planets is de- 
fective. 

He concludes that because a great part of our earth is 
not adapted to the support of life, because desert wastes 
and burning sands spread over vast districts of coun- 
try, and through all these solitudes no human being 
can find a comfortable home, therefore the planets of 
oar solar system may remain in a state of desolation, 
without animal or vegetable life. Again he says: 
"The earth may have existed for millions of years 
before it became a suitable abode for human beings, 
and therefore other planets may remain in the same 
condition." 

This argument is hypothetical and not sustained by 
the analogies of nature. He might as well argue that 
because some parts of our globe are not capable of 
sustaining life, therefore all parts of the globe must 
remain a tenantless waste. These regions are nature's 
great parks, and often serve as boundary lines between 
different nations, causing atmospheric and climatic 
changes, and producing the different flora and fauna 
of different countries. 

That Providence which delights in variety and has 
made no two things after the same pattern, and no 



94 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

two pebbles on the boundless ocean shore exactly 
alike, has scattered His treasures in great variety 
over different lands, and this creates a demand for 
commercial intercourse among the nations of the 
earth. 

In this we see a wonderfully wise arrangement. 
These commercial ties bind the different races scat- 
tered over the face of the globe into one common 
brotherhood, under the care of one providing Father. 
These bonds that bind men together may be denomi- 
nated wardrobe ties, table ties, luxury and literary 
ties, reaching out to and coming in from all nations. 
But we must remember that all this is, as it were, on 
one small apple, while there are many more on the 
same tree, and millions more scattered over neighbor- 
hood countries and continents, all bearing different 
kinds of fruit. 

This apple world, with its insect inhabitants, will 
give us an imaginary, though not an exaggerated, idea 
of the different sun systems of the universe — the in- 
numerable fruit-bearing orchards of the Infinite Crea- 
tor. But when we view these worlds in their motion 
through space the analogy fails. It is true, the apple 
may swing on the branches by the force of the wind, 
but this gives us no correct idea of the motion of these 
heavenly bodies in their orbits around their centers of 
gravity. The different systems are divided into groups 
and clusters, and these, rising one above the other and 
extending their orbits one around the other, not only 
like a wheel within a wheel, but like wheels beyond 



ANALOGIES IN NATURE. 95 

wheels and around wheels, until all finally move 
around some common central point, where there may 
be absolute rest. 

In this movement among the celestial orbs, satel- 
lites revolve around their primaries, and the planets 
around their central suns ; and these suns, like mighty 
engines of incomprehensible power, drag their train 
of planets and their satellites around their extending 
orbits, until the mind, in contemplating these mighty 
movements, becomes bewildered in view of these in- 
comprehensible magnitudes. 

There is a very strange coincidence between the 
question propounded by the Almighty to his ancient 
servant, Job — " Canst thou bind the sweet influence 
of the Pleiades ?" — and the discoveries of the great 
Prussian astronomer, Madler, who found motion in 
every star on which he fixed the telescope, except the 
central star of the Pleiades. Here he found no mo- 
tion, but he found numerous stars sweeping around 
this central sun. His views have been favored by 
other distinguished astronomers; and should it finally 
become a settled fact, demonstrated by unmistakable 
proofs, that Alcyone does not move, and that hosts of 
other stars move around him, then the words above 
quoted will have a significance hitherto unthought 
of. The calculations based upon the hypothesis of a 
central sun, around which all worlds revolve, has 
led astronomers to the astounding conclusion that it 
would take our sun system 18,200,000 years to make 
one revolution around this center of gravity. Light ? 



96 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

traveling at the rate of 12,000,000 miles per minute, 
would require 537 years to come from this sun to our 
earth. 

Looking out, then, upon this universe, we must 
consider our solar system a comparatively small re- 
public of the vast empire of worlds, and our earth 
shrinks down to a very insignificant point, compared 
with the stupendous whole. 

The diameter of the earth is too small to afford us 
a base for observation to obtain a parallax of even 
some of the nearest stars, and it is only by making 
observations at opposite points of the earth's orbit, 
190,000,000 of miles apart, that astronomers find a 
minute change in the position of some of these stars. 

Yet, small as this earth is, shrinking almost to an- 
nihilation in comparison with the universe, it is not to 
be despised, for there are millions of forms of life, and 
other wonderful things below us as well as above us. 
The microscope, as well as the telescope, reveals to us 
the wonders of creation, and a careful study of the Infi- 
nite Creator, through His works, will lift us out of 
our selfishness and above the little affairs of our short 
earth life, and excite in us a laudable pride in our re- 
lations to other and higher spheres. 

Dr. Whewell says that "the vast bodies which hang 
in the sky at such immense distances from us, and 
roll on their courses and spin around their axes with 
such exceeding rapidity, will lose nothing of their 
majesty in our eyes by being uninhabited, any more 
than the summer clouds, which, perhaps, are formed 






ANALOGIES IN NATURE. 97 

of the same materials, lose their dignity from the same 
cause." If living organisms are a higher type in 
nature's phenomena than inert and lifeless matter, 
then life in any form becomes a matter of interest to 
us. In pursuing his argument against life in other 
worlds, the distinguished author above quoted asks 
" whether the dignity of the moon would be greatly 
augmented if her surface were ascertained to be 
abundantly peopled with lizards ; or whether Mont 
Blanc would be more sublime if millions of frogs 
were known to live in the crevasses of its glaciers." 
Now, the question is not one of lizards and frogs, but 
of intelligent beings and life in any and every form. 
No matter how colossal the structure may be, if there 
is no life there we soon lose our interest in it. The 
planets would most assuredly have an additional in- 
terest for us if we knew to a certainty that they were 
inhabited, and what kind of inhabitants exist there. 

Would we not look upon Mont Blanc with additional 
interest if we knew that on its solitary summits there 
were some forms of life — some beings to break the 
silence of death and the solitude of the grave with 
the melody of their songs? With what interest would 
men direct their telescopes toward those dizzy heights 
if they had any prospect of seeing living beings mov- 
ing over those lonely rock wastes and finding a home 
and subsistence in those hyperborian regions. 

How much the dignity of the moon would be aug- 
mented if her surface were peopled with lizards, I am 
not prepared to say ; but should the traditional man in 



98 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

the moon show signs of life to the telescopic observer, 
every eye in the civilized world would be strained to 
catch a glimpse of the lonely dweller on the luner orb. 
But how would the matter stand if some successful ex- 
plorer had really and unmistakably discovered a race 
of intelligent beings in the moon, who lived happily 
amid the craters of her extinct volcanoes and found 
pleasure in roaming over her rock-ribbed mountains ? 
We would most assuredly look with renewed interest 
on the fair face of our satellite if we knew that she 
was teeming with life. 

As to the summer clouds having nothing added to 
their dignity by being inhabited, we can assure our 
distinguished and learned author, who appears to de- 
light in solitude and death, that if the summer clouds 
were known to be abodes of life, even in the most 
airy and fairy form, every eye would watch them as 
they rode in their chariots of clouds on the wings of 
the wind; and if we could only get an occasional 
glimpse of their cherubic forms, it would give us an 
additional interest in the clouds that water the earth 
with their showers. Even the awe-inspiring thunder 
storm would be looked at with greater attention if 
we knew there were living beings concerned in the 
uproar and the gloom produced by the whirlwind and 
the tornado in their destructive sweep over land and 
sea. 

All life is a matter of interest to the living, from 
the radiata to the molusca — to the articulata — to 
the vertebrated, at the head of which stands Man. 



ANALOGIES IN NATURE. 99 

Men, women and children will stand around the 
cages of our parks and zoological gardens, and gaze 
for hours on the living animals confined there, while 
they pay comparatively little attention to the other 
ornaments of the park. The fish that swim in the 
water and the swans that float on the surface of our 
tiny park lakes give to them an especial interest. 
Life cheers us everywhere, while lifeless matter alone 
brings over us the gloom of banishment and the soli- 
tude of the tomb. 

While residing in Colorado, a few years ago, I re- 
ceived a letter from a friend in Basel, Switzerland, 
(Europe,) to send, if possible, some wild animals from 
the mountains of North America for a zoological gar- 
den in Basel. The order was accompanied with $400, 
and an advertisement in the papers soon brought the 
animals to my residence. A Methodist presiding elder 
caught two buffalo calves and brought them in, others 
brought different animals ; and I soon had a supply 
of bear, buffalo, foxes, wildcats, catamounts, wolves, 
coyotes and prairie dogs. All were shipped in due 
time, in appropriate cages, marked, "Wild Animals 
from Denver, Colorado, North America," and after a 
" pleasant voyage " reached their destination in safety. 
These animals would be of more interest in the eyes 
of the people than the finest specimens of gold quartz 
or silver ore, or any mechanical contrivance that the 
art of man could produce. How far would people 
travel and how much would they give to see a bird or 
wildcat or any other animal from some of the planets ? 



100 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

And if living things are so interesting, can we for a 
moment bring ourselves to believe that this vast uni- 
verse is one solitary waste of lifeless matter, excepting 
our own insignificant earth, which, for all we know, is 
only floating on the outer circle of that inner glory 
where the Infinite Father reveals himself more espe- 
cially to an intelligent universe? 

The very thought of infinite resources and infinite 
power forbids the idea of limiting life to one minute 
point in creation, and leaving millions of worlds hung 
out in space, as dumb-bells, for the amusement of 
speculative astronomers. 



EARTH COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANETS. 101 



CHAPTER X. 



EARTH COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANETS. 

In the chapter on The Vastness of the Universal 
Empire where Life may Exist I noticed the planets in 
their regular order, by running an imaginary express 
train from the central sun to the outer planet of the 
solar system ; but, as that was a hasty trip, gotten up 
for an especial occasion and for the purpose of im- 
pressing the mind with the magnitude of one of the 
fields among thousands where the analogies of nature 
indicate the existence of life, there was no time for 
detailed description. I have also noticed the varied 
conditions under which life may and does exist on our 
earth. We will now look at the position of our earth 
in the solar system in connection with the other 
planets, with a view of offering an argument in favor 
of life on the other planets, from the resemblance 
between them and the earth. In a word, since life 
exists here in such diversified forms, why should it 



102 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

not exist where the physical condition corresponds so 
nearly with that which we find here? What superior 
claim has our earth to be filled to overflowing with 
living beings, while the other planets are viewed as 
barren wastes moving in solitude along their ap- 
pointed course? In its position, the earth is neither 
the nearest to the sun nor the farthest from it; 
neither is it in the middle of the system. It is not 
the smallest, nor the largest; it has only one moon, 
while some of the superior planets have from four to 
six, and as high as eight moons. But Dr. Whewell 
tells us it is in the temperate zone "of the solar 
system, and in that zone alone is the play of heat and 
cold, of moist and dry, possible." On the theory of 
direct heat radiation from the sun, he concludes that 
"on Venus and Mercury no vapors can linger. They 
are expelled by the fierce solar energies, and there is 
no cool stratum to catch them and return them. * * * 
If they were there they must fly to the outer regions — 
to the cold abodes of Jupiter and Saturn, if on their 
way the earth did not, with cold and airy fingers 
outstretched afar, catch a few drops of their treasure 
for the use of plant, and beast, and man." "Solid 
stone," says Dr. Whewell, "only, and the metallic 
ores which can be fused and solidified with little loss 
of substance, can bear the continued force of the near 
solar fire and be the materials of permanent solid planets 
in that region." Again, he says: "It was agree- 
able to the general scheme that the excess of vapor 
and water, which must necessarily be carried away or 



EARTH COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANETS. 103 

stored up in outer regions of the system, should be 
put into shapes in which it should have a permanent 
place and form." Whence does he get his informa- 
tion when he says: "And thus it was suitable to the 
general economy of creation that this vapor and 
water should be packed into rotating masses, such as 
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune"? How 
did he obtain this knowledge? Not by telescopic 
observation, nor by spectroscopic analysis. 

In his way of arguing, he stands alone ; and what- 
ever his scholarship may be on general scientific sub- 
jects, as ah astronomer his authority does not rank 
first-class. I have presented his statements with a 
view of offering objections. The planets, instead of 
being "rotating masses of water and ice," have been 
regarded by the highest authorities, if not at present, 
at least in their original formation, globes of liquid 
fire, that could only be the abodes of life after the 
cooling process has gone on for ages. It is strange 
that a man who has written so many popular works on 
different scientific subjects should contradict himself 
and the laws of physical science for the sake of main- 
taining an opposition to life anywhere outside of our 
own world. 

He is especially unfortunate when he says: "The 
earth's orbit is the only zone in the solar system 
where the play of heat and cold, moist and dry, are 
possible." What becomes of his water and vapor 
theory on the outer planets ? If Mars is too far 
away for "the play of heat and cold, moist and dry," 



104 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

what would be the condition of Jupiter, and more 
especially of Uranus and Neptune, from one to two 
billions of miles farther away ? How can water and 
vapor exist in rotating masses on these distant planets 
according to his theory? 

But the most singular part of his statement is, that 
when this scorching process commenced on Mercury 
and Venus, and the watery vapors started out into 
the cold abodes of Jupiter and Saturn, the " earth, 
with cold and airy fingers outstretched afar, caught 
a few drops of this treasure for the use of plant, and 
beast, and man." If Mercury and Venus contained 
such a mass of surplus water in their original forma- 
tion — which may well be doubted — is it not likely 
that the earth contained its due proportion with the 
other planets ? and why should she "stretch out her 
airy fingers to catch a few of these fugitive drops as 
they passed out to the cold abodes of the other 
planets ?" These statements only show that logic 
must yield to sophistry where men have formed 
opinions to which everything must buckle and bend. 

Now, what is the physical condition of the planets ? 
Mercury and Venus have each an atmosphere. This 
atmosphere, in all probability, is so constructed as to 
modify the heat on the interior planets, so as to make 
them comfortable abodes for life. It may not be such 
as we have on earth. The eyes of living beings there 
may be so constructed as to endure a greater amount 
of light, and the nervous system to endure more heat, 
and the forms of life may be as different from that on 



EARTH COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANETS. 105 

our earth as life in the water differs from 'life on land 
in our world, as noticed in the chapter on the Varied 
Conditions of Life on Earth. 

It is very evident, to every observing and candid 
mind, that different astronomers and scientists have 
made such vastly different representations, in reference 
to the physical condition of the planets, that any 
hypothesis founded on anything short of positive proof 
will be viewed with suspicion and distrust, when one 
class of writers affirm that the planets were thrown 
off from the sun in rotating rings, which finally 
formed themselves into globes, and some of the rings 
of Saturn were left in their original position, to show 
us how the worlds were made. This same class of 
philosophers further tell us that these globes are 
glowing masses of liquid fire, and can only become the 
abodes of life after a cooling process which may last 
for millions of years. Then another class of writers 
represent these planets " as rotating masses of water 
stored away in these outer planets, or globes of ice, 
where any kind of life known to us on earth is im- 
possible. Now, where we have nothing more certain 
than the conjectures of men in these fields of specu- 
lation, we may safely follow the analogies of nature 
and draw conclusions from existing facts. Among 
these existing facts we have the following, viz.: The 
planets have atmospheres like our earth, perhaps dif- 
fering considerably in density and extent, and this 
difference may be needed to modify the sun's heat on 
the nearer planets, and to increase the same by an 



106 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

increase of refracting power on the outer planets. We 
have found another well established fact by telescopic 
exploration : The planets rotate on their axes and 
move in their orbits around the sun the same as the 
earth, yet in different periods, according to their vary- 
ing distances from the central sun. We also find them 
accompanied by moons to cheer the darkness of their 
nights, and in some instances their magnificence far 
exceeding that of our satellite. 

Having given the opinions of Whewell in reference 
to the condition of the planets and the improbabilities, 
if not the impossibilities, of their being abodes of life, 
I will now give the views of another English writer 
of great eminence, whose opinions are entitled to great 
respect.* Sir David Brewster says: "In the exam- 
ination of Mars, Venus and Mercury we find analogies 
more or less numerous and striking with those of our 
own earth. * * * * An atmosphere of great height 
and of a peculiar constitution, reflecting on the planet 
the light of the sun many hours after he has set, might, 
in all of them, supply the place of a moon. The densi- 
ty of Mars and Venus is very nearly the same as that 
of the earth, the density of the former being 0-25 
and that of the latter 0-82, while the density of Mer- 
cury is a little greater, amounting to 1*12. As the 
diameter of Venus is nearly equal to that of the earth, 
the force of gravity upon its surface will be almost 
exactly the same; and in Mars and Mercury, whose 
diameters are only about one-half that of the earth 

* More Worlds than One, by Sir David Brewster, p. 81. 



EARTH COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANETS. 107 

the weight of bodies will be about one-half of what 
they would be if placed upon our own globe. 

"In Mars, Venus and Mercury the length of the 
day is almost exactly twenty-four hours, the same as 
that of the earth,* and in many other points the an- 
alogy with our globe is very striking. Continents 
and oceans and green savannahs have been observed 
upon Mars, and the snow of his polar regions has 
been seen to disappear with the heat of summer. In 
Venus and Mercury their surface is variegated with 
mountain chains of great elevation, and but for the 
brilliancy of their discs and the clouds which envelop 
them the telescope would have discovered to us more 
minute details upon their surface. 

" The planets of this inferior group are surrounded 
with atmospheres like our earth. We actually see the 
clouds floating in the atmosphere of Mars, and there 
is the appearance of land and water on his disc. 
Venus and Mercury are surrounded with the same 
medium essential to life, and in Venus astronomers 
have even observed the morning and the evening twi- 
light. These atmospheres are doubtless the means of 
tempering the great heat which Venus and Mercury 
receive from the sun; and the same purpose may be 
answered by the absence of that internal heat which 
exists in the earth, and which may be used to increase 
the temperature of the remoter planets. The intense 

* The mean of the length of the day in these four planets is within 
less than a minute of twenty-four hours. The days of Mercury, Venus, 
the earth and Mars are respectively 24h. 5m., 23h. 2lm., 24h. 7m., and 24h. 
7m., the mean of which is 24h. 0m. 45s. 



108 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

light which Venus and Mercury receive from the sun 
may be adduced as an objection to the existence upon 
these planets of inhabitants like ourselves ; but this 
objection is at once removed by the consideration that 
this intense light may be completely moderated either 
by a very small pupil or by a diminished sensibility 
of the retina, or by a combination of both. 

" Such are the numerous analogies which subsist 
between our earth and Mars, Venus and Mercury. 
They afford, as a popular writer observes, i the high- 
est degree of probability, not to say moral certainty, 
to the conclusion that these three planets, which, with 
the earth, revolve nearest to the sun, are, like the earth, 
appropriated by the Omnipotent Creator and Ruler of 
the universe to races very closely resembling those with 
which the earth is peopled.'* After concluding his 
examination of the four exterior planets, Jupiter, Sat- 
urn, Uranus and Neptune, the same able and candid 
writer closes his elaborate chapter in these words : 

" 'We have thus presented the reader with a brief 
and rapid sketch of the circumstances attending the 
two chief groups of globes which compose the solar 
system, and have explained the discoveries and strik- 
ing analogies, which, taken together, amount to a 
demonstration, that in the economy of the material 
universe these globes must subserve the same purposes 
as the earth, and mast be the dwellings of tribes of or- 
ganized creatures having a corresponding analogy to 
those which inhabit the earth. 

* Dr. Lardner's Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 23. 



EARTH COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANETS. 109 

" i The differences of organization and character 
which would be suggested as probable or necessary 
by the different distances of the several planets from 
the common source of light and heat, and the conse- 
quent differences of intensity of these physical agencies 
upon them, by the different weights of bodies on their 
surfaces, owing to the different intensities of their at- 
tractions on such bodies, by the different intervals 
which mark the alternation of light and darkness, are 
not more than are seen to prevail among the organized 
tribes, animal and vegetable, which inhabit different 
regions of the earth. The animals and plants of the 
tropical zones differ in general from those of the tem- 
perate and the polar zones ; and even in the same zone 
we find different tribes of organized creatures flourish 
at different elevations above the level of the sea. 
There is nothing more wonderful than this in the 
varieties of organization suggested by the various 
physical conditions by which the planets are af- 
fected.' " * 

This subject I have noticed more fully in the 
chapter on The Different Conditions of Life in Our 
World. 

It only remains for us to look at the physical con- 
dition of the superior planets and trace their analogy 
with our earth. 

The asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupi- 
ter are too small to allow us to know much about their 
condition. If there are inhabitants there, they must 

♦Dr. Lardner's Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 63. 



110 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

be small and of slender formation. The power of 
attraction on these planets must be in proportion to 
their bulk or specific gravity. It has been estimated 
that a man on one of these small planets might spring 
sixty feet into the air and come down without any 
injury to himself. It is not unreasonable to suppose 
that a race of spiritual beings may exist there, pro- 
vided with means of communication or traveling from 
one to others of these lilliputian worlds, floating in the 
ocean of space like the islands in our Pacific Ocean. 
The idea of life on these little worlds presents a 
pleasant picture to the mind, especially if we can con- 
ceive of a kind of republic of worlds where some kind 
of telephonic correspondence can be kept up between 
the different races that may be found there. Can it 
be that these planets were placed there by Omnipotent 
Power to run their solitary rounds through the ages, 
without life in some form to magnify the Creator's 
power and skill ? 

Passing from these to the great planet Jupiter, we 
find the mass of this planet largely exceeds all the 
planets of our system combined. His diameter is 
estimated at between 85,000 and 88,000 miles by dif- 
ferent astronomers. In mass he exceeds our earth 
213 times, and his time of revolution around the sun 
is a little less than twelve years of our time. His 
surface presents a diversified appearance, which may 
be caused by cloud masses passing over or through 
the upper part of his atmosphere. When we consider 
the comparatively small light he receives from the sun, 



EARTH COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANETS. Ill 

on account of his immense distance, and how bright 
he shines in our sky, we may well suspect that he is 
self-luminous and shines partly by his own light. This 
idea is strengthened from the luminous appearance of 
his four moons at the great distance at which we view 
them through our telescopes. In many respects he 
resembles our earth, as do the nearer planets. We 
may well conceive that races of men, as well as other 
living beings, there, are all on a larger scale than those 
found on the smaller planets. 

The same may be said of the three other large 
planets outside of the orbit of Jupiter — Saturn, 
Uranus and Neptune — with their moons changing, 
rising, culminating and going down like our own soli- 
tary satellite. 

Looking at these bright worlds, with their atmos- 
pheres and moons, and with their axis rotations and 
so many other things analogous to our earth, can we 
for a moment allow ourselves to think that the Creator 
has placed these mighty orbs in their positions and 
given them conditions for the support of life such as 
we find them to possess, and then leave them all a 
tenantless waste, without one living being to respond 
with gratitude to the throb of the great Father's 
heart, or to look with adoring wonder through these 
rolling and shining worlds up to their great Author ? 
Taking our Bible as a revelation from God, and col- 
lecting the numerous passages that exhort His intelli- 
gent beings on earth to praise their Creator, we are 
led to conclude that the homage of praise from a 



112 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

grateful heart is well pleasing to Him who made all 
things ; and why may we not suppose that He who 
delights in the adoration of the millions of His intelli- 
gent creatures would fill these worlds with such as 
would bring their homage of praise to the Infinite 
Source of all life ? 



COSMOGRAPHY OF THE ANCIENTS. 113 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE COSMOGRAPHY OP THE ANCIENTS. 

It is not unreasonable to suppose that among the 
earliest studies of our race was that of astronomy and 
the structure of the universe. This may have been 
closely connected with an inquiry into the cause of all 
existing things. The why and the wherefore will 
come up in the minds of all nations. Among all 
peoples there are found those who assume a leadership, 
and who, as a general rule, manifest a willingness to 
communicate any superior knowledge they may possess 
to their fellow-men. Agricultural pursuits and the 
care of herds and flocks to supply man's temporal 
wants came in the natural order of things, in every- 
day life, and the minds of men settled down on facts 
proven by repeated experiments, that became familiar 
to all. 

The humblest peasant and herdsman would soon 
become familiar with the routine of his daily toil, but 
the minds of men were never intended to be satisfied 
with the supply of mere bodily wants. We are here; 



114 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

and how came we here ? Who provided for us this 
beautiful world in which we live? Who made the 
sun and the moon and all these stars ? By what mys- 
terious power are they kept in motion? These and 
many other similar questions will ever and anon come 
up in the minds of men. The first communications 
made to the race had reference to moral character and 
conduct. We infer that this earth is not to be the 
final home of the race, because there is so little said 
in the revelation the Creator has made to us in refer- 
ence to its physical structure. But that He intends 
us to know something about other worlds we may also 
infer from the fact that He has spread out the vast vol- 
ume of nature before our eyes. 

Without books or other means of obtaining knowl- 
edge, save that which was directly communicated to 
the early races, either by spoken words or through the 
medium of angels or prophetic visions, they could 
study the lessons of a wondrous creative power in 
looking out upon the starry heavens by night, while 
they enjoyed the light and heat from the sun by day. 
To them "the heavens declared the glory of God and 
the firmament showed His handiwork. Day unto day 
uttered speech, and night unto night showed knowl- 
edge." Men soon advanced beyond the sphere of the 
rude cottage or the shepherd's tent, and sought to read 
the lessons of the sun, moon and stars. To the soul 
panting for knowledge the universe is one mighty epic 
pouring out in melodious strains the praise of the 
Omnipotent. 



COSMOGRAPHY OF THE ANCIENTS. 115 

The ancient astronomers and philosophers, who 
claimed to be the repositories of knowledge, without 
the telescope to aid their natural vision, tried to an- 
swer the questions that arose in the minds of men as 
best they could, and many strange errors were enter- 
tained before the light of scientific truth dawned upon 
the world. The strangest thing, however, in all litera- 
ture, is this singular fact, that while the wisest of 
heathen and pagan writers expressed their ideas with 
regard to the structure of the universe in such lan- 
guage as to make them a laughing-stock in the light of 
modern science, the Hebrew prophets alone expressed 
their views in reference to the vastness of the works of 
creation and the one almighty Creative Power in such 
terms as accord with the latest discoveries in the cos- 
mography of the universe. It is true that, in later 
periods, the Christian church adopted and believed the 
cosmography of heathen philosophers and astronomers, 
but these Christian fathers and teachers did not pre- 
tend to speak under a divine inspiration when they 
expressed their belief in the teachings of heathen 
philosophers. They were unacquainted with the laws 
of gravitation and attraction, and could not understand 
how the celestial bodies could float through space 
without a solid background to hold them. The theory 
of a solid sky received the assent of all the ancient 
philosophers. They supposed that the stars were per- 
manently fixed within the crystalline concentric sphere 
that surrounds the earth above us and rested upon its 
outer surface, while they were at a loss to know what 



116 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

the earth itself rested on. To them the earth was the 
center of the universe. 

These views of cosmography were interwoven with 
the religious creeds of pagan and Christian worshipers, 
and, among the latter, so deeply fixed in the minds of 
religious teachers, that no one dared to contradict 
these theories without incurring the displeasure of the 
church and subjecting himself to the charge of heresy. 
To account for the irregular movement of the planets, 
in accordance with the astronomical system of Ptole- 
my, they invented smaller circles, called epicycles, 
around which the planets were supposed to move, in 
addition to their motion around the earth. So com- 
plicated and inharmonious was this system, that the 
old astronomer, King Alphonso, said "if God had 
consulted him he would have suggested a more rational 
plan for the construction of the universe." 

"There is extant," says Mr. Blake, "a small work 
ascribed to Aristotle, entitled 'Letters of Aristotle to 
Alexander on the System of the World,' which gives 
so clear an account of the ideas entertained in his 
epoch, that we shall venture to give a somewhat long 
extract from it : 

"' There is a fixed and immovable center to the 
universe. This is occupied by the earth — the fruit- 
ful mother, the common focus of every kind of living 
thing. Immediately surrounding it on all sides is the 
air. Above this, in the highest region, is the dwell- 
ing place of the gods, which is called the heavens. 
The heavens and the universe being spherical and in 



COSMOGRAPHY OF THE ANCIENTS. 117 

continual motion, there must be two points on opposite 
sides, as in a globe which turns about an axis, and 
these points must be immovable and have the sphere 
between them. They are called the poles. If a line 
be drawn from one of these points to the other, it will 
be the diameter of the universe, having the earth in 
the center and the two poles at the extremities. Of 
these poles the northern one is always visible above 
our horizon, and is called the Arctic pole; the other, 
to the south, is always invisible to us — it is called 
the Antarctic pole. 

" c The substance of the heavens and of the stars 
is called ether ; not that it is composed of flame, as 
pretended by some who have not considered its nature, 
which is very different from that of fire, but it is so 
called because it has an eternal circular motion, being 
a divine and incorruptible element, altogether differ- 
ent from the other four. 

" ' Of the stars contained in the heavens, some are 
fixed and turn with the heavens, constantly maintain- 
ing their relative positions. In their middle portion 
is the circle called the Zoophore, which stretches ob- 
liquely from one tropic to the other, and is divided 
into twelve parts, which are the twelve signs (of the 
zodiac). The others are wandering stars, and move 
neither with the same velocity as the fixed stars nor 
with a uniform velocity among themselves, but all in 
different circles and with velocities depending on the 
distance of these circles from the earth. 

" * Although all the fixed stars move on the same 



118 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

surface of the heavens, their number cannot be deter- 
mined. Of the movable stars there are seven, which 
circulate in as many concentric circles, so arranged that 
the lower circle is smaller than the higher, and that 
the seven so placed one within the other are all within 
the sphere of the fixed stars. 

'"On the nearer — that is, the inner — side of this 
ethereal, immovable, unalterable, impassible nature is 
placed our corruptible and mortal nature. Of this 
there are several kinds, the first of which is fire, a 
subtle, inflammable essence, which is kindled by the 
great pressure and rapid motion of ether. It is in 
this region of air, when any disturbance takes place 
in it, that we see kindled shooting-stars, streaks of 
light and shining motes, and it is there that comets 
are lighted and extinguished. 

" * Below the fire comes the air, by nature cold and 
dark, but which is warmed and inflamed and becomes 
luminous by its motion. It is in the region of the 
air, which is passive and changeable in any manner, 
that the clouds condense, and rain, snow, frost and 
hail are formed and fall to the earth. It is the abode 
of stormy winds, of whirlwinds, thunder, lightning 
and many other phenomena. 

" 'The cause of heaven's motion is God. He is not 
in the center, where the earth is a region of agitation 
and trouble, but he is above the outermost circumfer- 
ence, which is the purest of all regions — a place 
which we call Auranos, because it is the highest part 
of the universe, and Olympos — that is, perfectly 



COSMOGRAPHY OF THE ANCIENTS. 119 

bright — because it is altogether separated from every- 
thing like the shadow and disordered movements which 
occur in the lower regions.' " 

The above gives an outline idea as entertained by 
the ancient astronomers with regard to the structure 
of the universe. But, as all their knowledge was 
mere conjecture, we are not surprised that many, under 
the influence of a lively imagination and the supersti- 
tions of their age, were led into extravagant notions 
with regard to magnitudes, revolutions and distances 
of the heavenly bodies. 

Hesiod, one of the most celebrated Grecian poets, 
in giving an idea of the distance from one extreme of 
the universe, said: 

"From the high heavens a brazen anvil cast, 
Nine days and nights in rapid whirl would last, 
And reach the earth the tenth ; whence strongly hurled, 
The same the passage to the infernal world." 

It is now known that it would take an anvil forty- 
two millions of days to reach the earth from some ot 
the nearest fixed stars ; and it would require no less 
than sixty-four and a half days for an anvil to fall 
from the sun to our earth. Their conception of the 
universe as an inclosed space, outside of which there 
was nothing, gave rise to numerous conjectures with 
regard to the foundation on which this universal 
structure rested. They saw the sun in the east in the 
morning, at the meridian at noon, and in the west at 
night; but how this rapid transition was effected was 
not so easily explained. "If we are to believe Plu- 



120 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

tarch,"saysMr. Blake,* "Xenophanes, who flourished 
about 360 years B. C, was very wild in his opinions. 
He thought the stars were lighted every night and 
extinguished every morning ; that the sun is a fiery 
cloud ; that eclipses take place by the sun being extin- 
guished and afterward rekindled; that the moon is 
inhabited, but is eighteen times larger than the earth ; 
that there are several suns and several moons for 
giving light to different countries. This can only be 
matched by those who said ' the sun went every night 
through a hole in the earth, and round again in the 
east ; or that it went above ground, and if we did not 
see it going back, it was because it accomplished the 
journey in the night.'" With regard to the founda- 
tion on which the earth rests, there were among the 
ancients many and varied opinions, some of which 
we will briefly notice. For the information given on 
this subject I am principally indebted to J. F. Blake's 
account of the terrestrial world of the ancients. 
• Xenophanes gave to the earth infinitely extended 
roots to sustain it. 

Thales, of Miletus, makes the earth rest upon water, 
without finding anything on which the water itself 
can rest, or answering the question how it is that the 
heavier earth can be supported on the lighter water. 

A number of others considered the earth flat and 
sustained by the air, which is accumulated below it. 

Aristotle himself says that " he agrees with those 
philosophers who think that the earth is brought to 

* Astronomical Myths, p. 159. 



COSMOGRAPHY OF THE ANCIENTS. 121 

the center by the primitive rotation of things, and 
quotes with approval the opinion that the earth placed 
in the center of the universe, at an equal distance 
from its extremities, there is no reason why it should 
move in one direction more than another, and rests 
immovable in the center without being able to leave it." 

" The Vedic priests among the Hindoos asserted 
that the earth was supported on twelve columns, which 
they very ingeniously turned to their own account, by 
asserting that these columns were supported by virtue 
of the sacrifices to the gods, so that if they were not 
made the earth would collapse." 

Again, some of the Hindoos symbolized the power 
that held the earth in its place by four elephants 
bearing it on their backs with their feet resting on an 
immense tortoise, which itself floated on the surface 
of a universal ocean. But what this ocean rested on 
must have remained an unexplained mystery. 

There is one striking feature in the cosmography 
of all nations : This is, the religious element com- 
bined with their views of the works of nature as seen 
in the material universe. Matter, in motion or at 
rest, from the smallest atom to the largest globe, 
forces upon the minds of all attentive observers the 
conviction that there is a power somewhere that some 
how or in some manner regulates and sustains this 
vast empire of matter ; and that we owe allegiance to 
this superior power, and are accountable to him for 
our conduct. Men may invent a thousand forms and 
symbols, and multiply images to any possible extent, 



122 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

yet all have their origin in the deep conviction that 
there is an almighty power existing, to whom we are 
trying to approach in our darkness, and to whom we 
look for help. 

No sooner had the Christian church gained power 
sufficient to control the thrones of kings and con- 
sciences of men than they commenced ecclesiastical 
legislation in reference to the physical structure of 
the universe, and considered a departure from their 
system of cosmography a violation of a divine law and 
an opposition to the teachings of the Bible. With 
varying shades of interpretation they adopted the 
system of Ptolomy and Aristotle. To them the 
earth was the universe ; the stars were fixed in the 
celestial vault, rotating around the central earth, for 
which they were made. The idea of a plurality of 
heavens was generally entertained, but the number 
was not satisfactorily settled. Some fixed the number 
at seven, others ran their calculations up to ten, and 
some to a still higher number. It was decreed by the 
church that above the sphere of the fixed stars was 
the dwelling place of God and the angels in an eternal 
abode of joy. 

The fathers of the church located the infernal re- 
gions in the center of the earth. The form of the 
infernal regions was that of a funnel, or reversed 
cone, with concentric and diminishing circles. These 
circles were also divided into several different regions 
— perhaps to accommodate the different grades of 
sinners — and this would correspond with the different 



COSMOGRAPHY OF THE ANCIENTS. 123 

degrees in heaven, where from seraphim and cheru- 
bim they were graded down to a lower order of angels, 
and the spirits of the just who had gone from this 
life with their varying shades of character, and con- 
sequently different degrees of fitness for the enjoyment 
of the different heavens. In these different grades of 
happiness, in the different spheres, there was a con- 
stant motive to virtue and piety, and many have been 
found, in all ages of the church and among all 
nations of the earth, who were willing to endure 
hardships and privations almost incredible with a view 
of gaining the highest enjoyment in the future world. 

" By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, re- 
fused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 
choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of 
God, for he had respect to the recompense of reward." 

Whatever ideas the ancients may have had of the 
structure of the earth and the location of heaven, 
and its proximity to the earth, their beliefs on these 
subjects could not affect their religious or moral char- 
acter, and every honest and sincere soul, looking for 
light, and following the light that comes to all earnest 
and anxious seekers, would make progress in the right 
direction, and meet with the divine approval at the last. 



124 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



CHAPTER XII. 



LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE DARK AGES. 

The superstitions that prevailed for a number of 
centuries, in Europe and other parts of the old world, 
afford a singular, and withal an interesting history. 
Wrong and fanciful interpretations of the Bible, 
a very limited knowledge of the structure of the uni- 
verse, and a dogmatism that would not yield to any 
scientific discoveries outside of the narrow grooves in 
which their religious thoughts ran, unless it was in 
the direction of the marvelous and mysterious, soon 
produced an abundant crop of legends, which were 
incorporated into their religious beliefs. Many of the 
stories invented by the fertile brains of superstitious 
religionists, who delighted in the marvelous, must have 
been known by their authors to be mere pictures of 
fancy, or, as St. Paul in his day calls them, " old 
wives' fables." But it was among early Christians, in 
some measure at least, as it was among heathens in an 
earlier day. 



LEGENDARY WORLDS. 125 

The idols that were at first intended as mere sym- 
bols of a divine and invisible power, in the course of 
time became objects of worship ; so these legends be- 
came interwoven with the texture of the religious lives 
of the early Christians, and as their faith was founded 
on the supernatural, and on a divine revelation, instead 
of following the plain teachings of this revelation their 
minds readily drifted into many of the superstitious 
notions of the ancient idolators. 

It is an interesting study to learn how far a knowl- 
edge of astronomy and its kindred sciences will dispel 
the gloom and remove the fetters that so long enslaved 
and degraded the people. However different the 
creeds and opinions of the worshipers at the different 
altars and shrines may be, they all point to a place of 
repose for the soul after this life, or a spiritual heaven, 
where angels and the spirits of the just might have 
an eternal existence. This seems to be the aim and 
desire of every human being. Although there are 
various opinions in reference to the mode of our exist- 
ence, as well as the conditions that surround us, yet 
there has always been more unity of sentiment in ref- 
erence to the final abode of the good and devout wor- 
shiper than there has been in reference to the condi- 
tion of the lost and the outcast from divine favor. I 
have already given an account of the different opinions 
in reference to the location of the terrestrial paradise, 
and will now give an account of some of the legends 
that were published, and the places that were de- 
scribed, and were believed to have a real existence, 



126 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

and had an influence on their ideas of astronomy and 
cosmography. Some of the enthusiasts of those early 
days claimed to have visited the regions that lie beyond 
the range of our mortal vision, and reported the result 
of their adventures among the departed, so as to give 
information to the living with regard to the fates of 
those who had gone before. Among the most re- 
markable of these legends we have several recorded by 
Mr. John F. Blake, in his "Astronomical Myths." 
The first is that of Thespesius, who claimed to have 
visited the infernal regions : 

" This Thespesius relates his adventures in the 
other worlds. Having fallen head-first from an ele- 
vated place, he found himself unwounded, but was 
contused in such a way as to be insensible. He was 
supposed to be dead, but after three days, as they 
were about to bury him, he came to life again. In a 
few days he recovered his former powers of mind and 
body ; but made a marvelous change for the better in 
his life. 

" He said that at the moment that he lost conscious- 
ness he found himself like a sailor at the bottom of the 
sea ; but afterward, having recovered himself a little, 
he was able to breathe perfectly, and, seeing only with 
the eyes of his soul, he looked round on all that was 
about him. He saw no longer the accustomed sights, 
but stars of prodigious magnitude, separated from 
each other by immense distances. They were of daz- 
zling brightness and splendid color. His soul, carried 
like a vessel on the luminous ocean, sailed along freely 



LEGENDARY WORLDS. 127 

and smoothly, and moved everywhere with rapidity. 
Passing over in silence a large number of the sights 
that met his eye, he stated that the souls of the dead, 
taking the form of bubbles of fire, rise through the 
air, which opens a passage above them; at last the 
bubbles, breaking without noise, let out the souls in a 
human form and of a smaller size, and moving in dif- 
ferent ways. Some, rising with astonishing lightness, 
mounted in a straight line ; others, running round like 
a whipping-top, went up and down by turns with a 
confused and irregular motion, making small advance 
by long and painful efforts. Among this number he 
saw one of his parents, whom he recognized with dif- 
ficulty, as she had died in his infancy ; but she ap- 
proached him, and said, 'Good day, Thespesius.' 
Surprised to hear himself called by this name, he told 
her that he was called Arideus, and not Thespesius. 
'That was once your name,' she replied, 'but in 
future you will bear that of Thespesius, for you are 
not dead; only the intelligent part of your soul has 
come here by the particular will of the gods ; your 
other faculties are still united to your body, which 
keeps them like an anchor. The proof I will give 
you is that the souls of the dead do not cast any 
shadow, and they cannot move their eyes.' 

" Further on, in traversing a luminous region, he 
heard, as he was passing, the shrill voice of a female 
speaking in verse, who presided over the time Thes- 
pesius should die. His genie told him that it was 
the voice of the Sibyl, who, turning on the orbit of 



128 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

the moon, foretold the future. Thespesius would 
willingly have heard more, but, driven off by a rapid 
whirlwind, he could make out but little of her pre- 
dictions. In another place he remarked several par- 
allel lakes, one filled with melted and boiling gold, 
another with lead colder than ice, and a third with 
very rough iron. They were kept by genii, who, 
armed with tongs like those used in forges, plunged 
into these lakes, and then withdrew, by turns, the 
souls of those whom avarice or an insatiable cupidity 
had led into crime ; after they had been plunged into 
the lake of gold, where the fire made them red and 
transparent, they were thrown into the lake of lead. 
Then, frozen by the cold, and made as hard as hail, 
they were put into the lake of iron, where they became 
horribly black. Broken and bruised on account 01 
their hardness, they changed their form, and passed 
once more into the lake of gold, and suffered in these 
changes inexpressible pain. 

" In another place he saw the souls of those who had 
to return to life and be violently forced to take the 
form of all sorts of animals. Among the number he 
saw the soul of Nero, which had already suffered many 
torments, and was bound with red-hot chains of iron. 
The workmen were seizing him to give him the form 
of a viper, under which he was destined to live. 

" The locality of these infernal regions was never 
exactly determined. The ancients were divided upon 
the point. In the poems of Homer the infernal re- 
gions appear under two different forms : thus, in the 






LEGENDARY WORLDS. 129 

Iliad it is a vast subterranean cavity ; while in the 
Odyssey it is a distant and mysterious country at the 
extremity of the earth, beyond the ocean, in the neigh- 
borhood of the Cimmerians. 

" In every case, however, both among pagans and 
Christians, the locality was somewhere in the center 
of the earth. The poets and philosophers of Greece 
and Rome made very detailed and circumstantial maps 
of the subterranean regions. They enumerated its 
rivers, its lakes, and woods, and mountains, and the 
places where the Furies perpetually tormented the 
wicked souls who were condemned to eternal punish- 
ment. These ideas passed naturally into the creeds 
of Christians through the sect of the Essenes, of 
whom Josephus writes as follows : ' They thought 
that the souls of the just go beyond the ocean to a 
place of repose and delight, where they were troubled 
by no inconvenience, no change of seasons. Those of 
the wicked, on the contrary, were relegated to places 
exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, and 
suffered eternal torments. The Essenes,' adds the 
same author, ' have similar ideas about these torments 
to those of the Greeks about Tartarus and the king- 
dom of Pluto. The greater part of the Gnostic sects, 
on the contrary, considered the lower regions as sim- 
ply a place of purgatory, where the soul is purified 
by fire.' 

"Amongst all the writings of Christian ages, in 
which matters such as we are now passing in review 
are described, there is one that stands out beyond all 



130 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

others as a masterpiece, and that is the magnificent 
poem of Dante, his Divine Comedy, wherein he de- 
scribed the infernal regions as they presented them- 
selves to his lively and fertile imagination. 

" The theology of Dante, strictly orthodox, was 
that of St. Thomas and the other doctors of the 
church. Natural philosophy, properly so called, 
was not yet in existence. In astronomy, Ptolemy 
reigned supreme, and in the explanation of celestial 
phenomena no one dreamt or dared to dream of 
departing in any way from the traditionally sacred 
system. 

" In those days astronomy was indissolubly linked 
with a complete series of philosophical and theological 
ideas, and included the physics of the world, the 
science of life in every being, of their organization, 
and the causes on which depended the aptitudes, 
inclinations, and even in part the actions, of men, 
the destinies of individuals, and the events of his- 
tory." 

I have stated in another chapter of this work that 
religion and the Bible need the influence of science to 
control the human mind and to check the tendency 
to a gross superstition. It is only when these two 
great factors in man's moral and religious elevation 
are united, and have each their proper sphere, that 
men can arise to the dignity and high destiny to which 
the Infinite designs to lead His children. We say 
again, science and religion should walk hand in hand 
through the vast temple of nature. It is now claimed 



LEGENDARY WORLDS. 131 

in high quarters that a departure from the dogmas 
of religious teachers has led to all the disorders and 
moral delinquencies with which modern society is 
afflicted. History, on the other hand> assures us 
that the breaking asunder the fetters of ecclesiastical 
restraints, in the character of prelates, has opened 
the way out of the darkness and errors of the middle 
ages. In proof of this we take a few more extracts 
from Mr. Blake's interesting work on this subject. 
After describing the abode of the blessed and happy 
souls in "the empyreal heaven of pure light," he 
gives a description of the interior of the earth, as 
believed in those days: 

"Within the earth is a large cone, whose layers 
are the frightful abodes of the condemned, and which 
ends in the center, where the divine Justice keeps 
bound up to his chest in ice the prince of the 
rebellious angels, the emperor of the kingdom of 
woe. Such are the infernal regions which Dante 
describes according to ideas generally admitted in 
the middle ages. 

"Not only was the geography of the infernal 
regions attempted in the middle ages, but even their 
size. Dexelius calculated that the number of the 
damned was a hundred millions, and that their abode 
need not measure more than one German mile in 
every direction. Cyrano of Bergerac amusingly said 
that it was the damned that kept turning the earth, 
by hanging on the ceiling like bats, and trying to 
get away. 



132 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

"In 1757, an English clergyman, Dr. Swinden, 
published a book entitled, Researches on the Nature 
of the Fire of Hell and the Place where It is Situated. 
He places it in the sun. According to him, the Chris- 
tians of the first century had placed it beneath the 
earth on account of a false interpretation of the de- 
scent of Jesus into hell after his crucifixion, and by 
false ideas of cosmography. He attempted to show, 
1st, that the terrestrial globe is too small to contain 
even the angels that fell from heaven after their bat- 
tle; 2nd, that the fire of hell is real, and that the 
closed globe of earth could not support it a sufficiently 
long period ; 3rd, that the sun alone presents itself as 
the necessary place, being a well-sustained fire, and 
directly opposite in situation to heaven, since the em- 
pyreal is round the outside of the universe, and the 
sun in the center. What a change to the present 
ideas, even of doctors of divinity, in a hundred years ! 

" So far, then, for mediaeval ideas on the position 
and character of hell. Next as to purgatory. 

" The voyage to purgatory that has met with most 
success is certainly the celebrated Irish legend of St. 
Patrick, which for several centuries was admitted as 
authentic, and the account of which was composed cer- 
tainly a century before the poem of Dante. 

" This purgatory, the entrance to which is drawn 
in more than one illuminated manuscript, is situated 
in Ireland, on one of the islands of Lough Derg, 
County Donegal, where there are still two chapels 
and a shrine, at which annual ceremonies are per- 



LEGENDARY WORLDS. 133 

formed. A knight, called Owen, resolved to visit it 
for penance; and the chronicle gives us an account of 
his adventures. 

" First he had his obsequial rites performed, as if 
he had been dead, and then he advanced boldly into 
the deep ravine ; he marched on courageously, and 
entered into the semi-shadows ; he marched on, and 
even this funereal twilight abandoned him, and ' when 
he had gone for a long time in this obscurity there 
appeared to him a little light as it were from a glim- 
mer of day.' He arrived at a house, built with much 
care, an imposing mansion of grief and hope, a mar- 
velous edifice, but similar nevertheless to a monkish 
cloister, where there was no more light than there is 
in this world in winter at vesper-time. 

" The knight was in dreadful suspense. Suddenly 
he heard a terrible noise, as if the universe was in a 
riot ; for it seemed certainly to him as if every kind 
of beast and every man in the world were together, 
and each gave utterance to their own cry, at one time 
and with one voice, so that they could not make a 
more frightful noise. 

" Then commenced his trials and discourse with 
the infernal beings ; the demons yelled with delight 
or with fury round him. l Miserable wretch,' said 
some, ' you are come here to suffer.' ' Fly,' said 
others, 'for you have not behaved well in the time 
that is passed : if you will take our advice, and will 
go back again to the world, we will take it as a great 
favor and courtesy.' 



134 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

" Owen was thrown on the dark shadowy earth, 
where the demons creep like hideous serpents. A 
mysterious wind, which he scarcely heard, passed over 
the mud, and it seemed to the knight as if he had 
been pierced by a spear-head. After a while the de- 
mons lifted him up ; they took him straight off to the 
east, where the sun rises, as if they were going to the 
place where the universe ends. ' Now, after they had 
journeyed for a long time here and there over divers 
countries, they brought him to an open field, very long 
and very full of griefs and chastisements ; he could 
not see the end of the field, it was so long ; there were 
men and women of various ages, who lay down all 
naked on the ground with their bellies downward, who 
had hot nails driven into their hands and feet ; and 
there was a fiery dragon, who sat upon them and drove 
his teeth into their flesh, and seemed as if he would 
eat them ; hence they suffered great agony, and bit the 
earth in spite of its hardness, and from time to time 
they cried most piteously, ' Mercy, mercy ;' but there 
was no one there who had pity or mercy, for the dev- 
ils ran among them and over them, and beat them 
most cruelly.' 

" The devils brought the knight toward a house of 
punishment, so broad and long that one could not see 
the end. This house is the house of baths, like those of 
the infernal regions, and the souls that are bathed in 
ignominy are there heaped in large vats. ' Now so it 
was, that each of these vats was filled with some kind 
of metal, hot and boiling, and there they plunged and 



LEGENDARY WORLDS. 135 

bathed many people of various ages, some of whom 
were plunged in over their heads, others up to their 
eyebrows, others up to the eyes, and others up to the 
mouth. Now all, in truth, of these people cried out 
with a loud voice and wept most piteously.' 

" Scarcely had the knight passed this terrible place, 
and left behind in his mysterious voyage that column 
of fire which rose like a lighthouse in the shades, and 
which shone so sadly betwixt hope and eternal despair, 
than a vast and magnificent spectacle displayed itself 
in the subterranean space. 

" This luminous and odorescent region, where one 
might see so many archbishops, bishops and monks of 
every order, was the terrestrial paradise; man does 
not stay there always ; they told the knight that he 
could not taste too long its rapid delights ; it is a 
place of transition between purgatory and the abodes 
of heaven, just as the dark places which he had trav- 
ersed were made by the Creator between the world and 
the infernal regions. 

" < In spite of our joys,' said the souls, ' we shall pass 
away from here.' Then they took him to a mountain, 
and told him to look, and asked of him what color the 
heavens seemed to be there where he was standing, 
and he replied it was the color of burning gold, such 
as is in the furnace ; and then they said to him, ' That 
which you see is the entrance to heaven and the gate 
of paradise.'" 

It brings to the thoughtful mind melancholy reflec- 
tions to think that ignorance and superstition have 



136 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

forged such chains to bind the free and noble souls of 
men, and instill into the mind such low conceptions of 
the divine plan for the elevation and moral transfor- 
mation of our race. Yet out of darkness light has 
arisen, and upon fallen structures of superstition and 
error truth has built her temples and lighthouses to 
guide inquiring souls to a purer light and a better 
condition. 



UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR FUTURE LIFE. 137 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR FUTURE LIFE. 

Among heathen nations the myths and mysterious 
rites that were so intimately interwoven with their relig- 
ious beliefs undoubtedly had their origin in the almost 
universal desire among all nations for a future exist- 
ence. From this longing for immortality was begotten 
a sense of dependence upon some higher power, and 
consequently an obligation to pay homage to that 
mysterious and invisible Being who is above all ma- 
terial things. However ignorant and superstitious 
men and nations may become, from a want of moral 
and physical culture, they scarcely ever drift away 
into such low conditions as not to acknowledge an in- 
telligence and power over and above and anterior to 
matter. This indwelling consciousness of a Supreme 
Ruler has found a lodgment in the heart of the rudest 
savage. 



138 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

In a very interesting work recently published by 
Mrs. I. L. Hauser, who was for seven years engaged 
in the missionary work in Northern India, we find the 
following statement: 

" History and the experience of travelers through- 
out the world show that mankind are universally con- 
scious of a Supreme Being, and that, however uncivil- 
ized and barbarous, they know right from wrong, and 
that they have sinned in the sight of Him who is 
above all others. Man is a sinner, and he knows it. 
His religion may range from the highest spiritual type 
to the grossest form of paganism, yet its object is to 
get rid of the penalties of sin and appease the wrath 
of an offended god or gods. 

"Dr. Livingston, in his last journal, states that he 
did not find a tribe in Central Africa but had some 
form of religious worship. While in India, I was par- 
ticular in my inquiries to find, if possible, one who 
had no idea of God, of sin, or of his moral responsi- 
bility. On the borders of Thibet, among a people 
who had never been away from their mountain homes, 
and on the plains, among the lowest and most ignorant, 
I never found one person who did not know that he 
was a sinner and needed to be saved from his sins. It 
would be as consistent to deny the light and warmth 
of the sun all over our planet as to doubt the spirit- 
ual light and influence directly from God upon the 
souls of all mankind. The Arctic regions are cold, 
but they would be colder were there no sun. There 
may be blindness, gross depravity and terrible cruelty 



UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE TOR FUTURE LIFE. 139 

among certain portions of our race, but they would 
be worse still had God utterly left them. It is not 
exalting God to limit Him to a few people called 
Christians, or to confine Him to certain portions of 
the earth. He is God over all, blessed forever." * 

Was not this deep consciousness of weakness and 
want planted in every human heart to excite a desire 
to struggle out of their darkness and misery into a 
higher and better condition ? 

" There's not a pirate in the Indian Ocean 
God dwells not in with tides of pure emotion, 
Seeking to hallow, sanctify, inspire, 
And lift him from that hell of inward fire 
Whose scorching madness desolates, defiles, 
Degrades his spirit in those barbarous isles. 
God worketh there as where the angels are, 
Seeking to call from out these caverns drear 
Bright spirits fitted for the holy sphere — 
Seeking to change the human wolves to men, 
While angels breathe from heaven 'Amen, amen.' " 

The universal wish for life and future happiness 
finds expression in a thousand forms of devotional 
offerings and sacrifices to the supposed or acknowl- 
edged source of our final deliverance from suffering. 
From a want of properly authenticated oral instruc- 
tions to convey to the mind the nature and attributes 
of that Divinity to whom they reach out their hands 
for help in their feebleness, and to whom they look for 
light in their darkness, they first invented symbols 
that might impress upon the mind some attribute of 

* The Orient and its People, by Mrs. I. L. Hauser, p. 128. 



140 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

this Divine Being — something as an ever-present re- 
minder of a constant care over individuals and nations. 
For this deep conviction that sinks down into the inner 
chambers of our hearts' best feelings and assures us that 
we have a common and a universal Father will lead the 
soul out into its longings and aspirations toward the 
Divine Creator. Then comes this feeling that 

" Creation, like a new-born infant, lies 
Near to his heart, sight, sense and inward eyes, 
The Moral Reason — all declare how dear 
Creation is to the great Father Soul. 
Its little pulses from His bosom roll, 
O'erflowed and harmonized. Its lips are fed 
From God, and on His breast it pillows its young head." 

But how to approach this great Father, and what of- 
ferings to bring to Him, have been the question above 
all other questions in the history of the whole human 
race. Leaving out of the question the difference in 
the creeds of Christendom, we will glance at the life 
struggles of pagan lands. 

Their religious rites and offerings were an out- 
growth of personal observations and experience, and 
from theistic conceptions, through painful lessons of 
suffering and endurance of innumerable evils, arose 
the belief in supernatural powers to cause the evils 
we suffer as well as the good we enjoy. The same 
power that produced the good was not supposed to be 
the author of the evil ; and hence the conception that 
there must be a divinity for the evil as well as for the 
good in the world. 



UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR FUTURE LIFE. 141 

Again, as the different seasons came, with their va- 
ried products, to supply men's wants, they attributed 
these numerous supplies to different divine powers ; 
hence came the idea of multiplying divinities for the 
seasons of the year, who were supposed to preside 
over the products of the earth. 

Again, the diversity of lands and countries, their 
hills and valleys, rivulets and rivers, as well as the 
increasing wants and woes of the race, suggested the 
idea of divinities for all these varied conditions, and 
all, in the course of time, had their symbolic repre- 
sentations in something tangible to the senses of men. 
From these symbols of invisible powers was begotten 
the idea of crude and unsightly images — hideous 
monsters, of horrid shapes and forms. 

A natural tendency in the human mind to enter- 
tain doubts with regard to the nature and source of 
invisible powers, and their influence over us, and the 
tendency to a gross materialism, soon led men to turn 
away from that which the image primarily represented, 
and to make an object of worship of the tangible and 
ever-present idol. In the course of time, idols were 
multiplied for the house and for the field, for disease 
and health, for seed time and harvest, for hills and 
valleys, and almost everything that became a matter 
of interest to humanity. 

Finally, not satisfied with dumb idols and mere 
symbols of divinity, they looked for living deities, or 
incarnations of divine principles in living forms; and 
hence their mythology abounds with legends of gods 



142 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

and goddesses — ancestral heroes — with marvelous 
histories. From living beings their divinities were 
transferred to the celestial regions, and had perma- 
nent places assigned them in the starry heavens, 
claiming for them a perpetual influence over the 
affairs of this life. 

Such were the legend of Osiris and Isis, the prin- 
cipal deities of Egypt. They were intended to rep- 
resent the conflict between evil and good, or right and 
wrong. Osiris represents the origin of human civili- 
zation. His name signified "Lord of the earth," or 
"many eyed." Isis, the wife of Osiris, was adored 
as the great benefactress of Egypt, and it was claimed 
that she instructed her people in the cultivation of 
wheat and barley, and these cereals were always car- 
ried in her festival processions. Her worship was in- 
troduced into Greece and Rome and other nations. In 
a conflict between Osiris and Typhon, or Evil, Osiris 
was slain, his dead body put into a box and cast into 
the Nile, whence it floated into the ocean. Isis, like 
a faithful wife, after she learns of his death, ransacks 
the world in search of his body. Typhon is eventu- 
ally slain by Horus, the son of Isis. Two elements 
or powers are represented by this legend : Isis, the 
passive or prolific in terrestrial nature ; and Osiris, 
that which acted upon passive nature for the good 
of man — the active energy of life — the beneficent 
or germinating influence — wherever exhibited. The 
power to produce discords was represented by Typhon, 
who was finally to be overcome and conquered by Isis. 



UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR FUTURE LIFE. 143 

The whole system of idolatry, with its sacrifices and 
mystic and mysterious rites, is nothing less than the 
utterance of one universal outcry for a future life. 
The burdens of life may be heavy, and the journey 
through it may be painful, yet the millions of our 
race are looking through their darkness, anxiously 
waiting and hoping for a perpetuation of their ex- 
istence in the great future. 

While there are found among all nations honest 
hearts seeking for truth, there have also been found 
designing leaders and priests at sacred altars and 
shrines who cared more for their own interest than 
for the welfare of the people whom they under- 
took to lead and instruct. This has been witnessed 
among Jews and Christians as well as in pagan 
lands. 

In every religious system there have been found 
strong tendencies to a departure from primitive ideas 
and old established opinions, sometimes in a progres- 
sion toward clearer conceptions of man's relations to 
a higher power and his condition in a future life, and 
perhaps more frequently a retrocession to lower con- 
ditions of spiritual life and a corruption of primitive 
truths as well as forms of worship. Declines have 
followed reformations, and in the cycle of years refor- 
mation has succeeded decline, and thus the tidal wave 
of religious feelings has been ebbing and flowing 
through the ages past. 

There is one remarkable feature connected with this 
progression and retrocession in religious excitement. 



144 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

All leaders in religious movements have claimed to be 
under a divine illuminating influence, and in this way 
have gained a power over the minds of their hearers. 
Another remarkable feature in all progressive move- 
ments in religious beliefs is the uniform opposition the 
reformers have met with. This has not been confined 
to rude and barbarious nations. Some of the so- 
called Christian nations have been as fierce in perse- 
cuting those who differed from them as the wildest 
savages. 

From small beginnings, surrounded with discour- 
agements, oppressed by persecutions, the leaders in 
the great religious systems of the world have in some 
instances triumphed over the obstacles thrown in their 
way, and their systems have arisen to power and a 
controlling influence over the minds of men that 
strongly indicates a supernatural influence in their 
favor. This world has been, so far as history carries 
us back, one great battle-field, not alone for temporal 
power and possessions and territorial conquests, but 
for the propagation and advancement of religious 
opinions. 

Whence arises this universal struggle for life in the 
future ? Is it not planted in every human heart to 
awaken in every one a longing for immortality ? 
There is a divine light that shineth on all hearts. The 
thick clouds of error may obscure it, yet still it pene- 
trates the darkest shades of human sorrows. " Out 
of Zion the perfection of beauty God hath shined." 
Christ is the divine light of the world. 



UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR FUTURE LIFE. 145 

" God works through Christ the Lord— 
The one Deific Word, 
And through him made all things, 
The planets and their rings, 
The suns and all their spheres, 
The seasons and their years ; 
Through him the Infinite 
Shines with creative light." 

As we find foot-prints of a Creator everywhere in 
the material universe, so we find implanted in the 
human heart among all the inhabitants on this earth 
an expressed or implied desire to live in a future 
state. Nearly, if not quite, all the religious beliefs 
demand certain prescribed conditions, either on the 
part of the individual himself or his friends, in order 
to secure a happy existence. The rude savage finds 
comfort in hoping while living, and his friends find 
consolation in helping him on his journey after death 
and providing for him in the future. Just now, while 
the Roman Catholic church throughout the world is 
in mourning for Pope Pius IX., and prayers are 
ascending from thousands of altars "for the repose of 
his soul," we see the following report from our West- 
ern frontier in reference to the funeral services of the 
Sioux and other Indian tribes : " Soon after death, 
either the same or next day, the friends and relations 
of the deceased all gather at his lodge, and by their 
sad and dirge-like wailings, interspersed with sharp, 
short cries, console the afflicted kinsfolk, each taking 
more pains than the other to show great grief. Then 
such relics as robes, calico, beadwork, ponies, etc., are 



146 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

given away by the deceased's relatives, and as those 
who cry the loudest and longest usually get some- 
thing, the exhibition is conducted with a great deal of 
spirit. When ponies are killed, those are selected 
which had endeared themselves to the deceased, and 
no matter how fast or how well trained they are they 
join the spirit. In some cases the pony is saddled 
and bridled, saddle-bags stuffed with meat and dried 
berries and blankets, and led by a lariat (long rope) 
to the lodge just as the owner is about to depart 
this life. The lariat is placed in the hands of the 
dying person and the pony shot. In most instances 
the ponies are killed at the grave. A gun, and in its 
absence a bow and quiver of arrows, pipe, tobacco, 
etc., are wrapped up with the body. The pony is 
killed that the spirit may ride to the happy hunting 
ground, and the other articles are placed with the 
spirit so he may have the necessaries of Indian life 
on his journey to that beautiful place." 

Is not the one as sincere as the other in effort to bene- 
fit departed friends? And by these deeds of kindness 
they hope to plant flowers along the pathway they, too, 
expect to travel at the close of their pilgrimage. 

" 'Tis weary watching, wave by wave, 

And yet the tide heaves onward ; 
"We climb like corals, grave by grave, 

Yet pave the path that's sunward ; 
We're beaten back in many a fray, 

But never strength we borrow, 
And where the vanguard camps to-day 

The rear shall rest to-morrow. 



UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR FUTURE LIFE. 147 

" Through all the long, dark night of years 

The people's cry ascendeth, 
And earth is wet with blood and tears 

And our meek sufferance endeth, 
The few shall not forever sway, 

The many toil in sorrow ; 
The powers of hell are strong to-day, 

But Christ shall reign to-morrow." 

It is the strong anchor of hope that sustains the 
soul in its earthly conflict and points it to "a rest 
beyond the river." 

"In the Chinese Fo worship, the Liturgy, there is 
recorded a high act of consecration to the service of 
humanity : ' Never will I seek or receive private 
individual salvation, never enter into final peace alone, 
but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for 
the universal redemption of every creature through- 
out all worlds ; I pray for all men that they may 
attain perfection of wisdom.' In what Christian 
land shall we easily find a like generous vow of con- 
secration?"* 

The universal cry for help from earth's suffering 
millions of anxious souls should excite a universal 
sympathy on the part of those who have power and 
means of lifting the burdens from the heavy ladened, 
and throw a ray of light across the pathway of the 
weary traveler. 

As long as human hearts and hands are closed 
against the cries of a suffering race, just so long will 
the dark shadows of cheerless materialism beset our 

* Budda and Buddhism, by C. D. B. Mills, p. 77. 



148 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

way, and portentous clouds rest on our future pros- 
pects. When Jesus beheld the anxious crowd throng- 
ing around Him, and spreading out over distant lands, 
He said to His disciples : "Go ye also into My vine- 
yard, and whatsoever is right I will give you." And 
to show the importance of helping struggling human- 
ity out of their misery, He said : " My Father work- 
eth hitherto, and I work." And the apostle Paul says : 
"We, then, are as workers together with Him." Such 
are the ties that bind the race of man into one uni- 
versal brotherhood that we help ourselves out of dark- 
ness and sorrow by reaching out a friendly hand to 
our neighbor. It is by stooping down to the lowest 
condition of life that we ascend to a higher plane. 
It is by walking out into the dreary paths where the 
wanderers — the Magdalenes and the publicans — 
have strayed that we find for ourselves the flowery 
paths that lead to the celestial mansions. It is among 
these thorns of the moral waste that the sweetest 
scented roses may be made to bloom under proper 
and careful cultivation, and their fragrance will wan- 
der in freshness and live in memories when thorns 
and flowers and leaves have passed away. The moun- 
tains over which the erring ones have strayed may be 
steep and rugged. The night of moral gloom into 
which we are called to walk, to find the outcast and 
the lost, may be dark and dreary, but while the cry 
comes from the mountain top and from the dark 
valley, "no man careth for my soul," men of means 
and moral and religious power and influence should 



UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR FUTURE LIFE. 149 

run to the rescue, and help the erring ones out of 
their sorrows. In this great battle-field of life there 
is work for the whole family, and 

"I am told 
That could a high archangel's heart grow cold, 
His wisdom would avail him not, but he 
Would sink into a dark vacuity — 
A hollow shell of being, and no more 
Be visible on Love's celestial shore. 
Heart thrills to heart through all the wide domain 
Of heavenly life. All angels form a chain 
That in God's burning throne begins and winds 
Down to the lowest plans of earthly minds, 
And only as each lifts the lower friend 
Can each into superior joys ascend." 

Any pretension to religion that does not lead us 
out of our selfishness to suffering and sorrowing hu- 
manity is a mockery and a delusion, and our highest 
pretension to a marvelous and miracle-working faith 
leaves us nothing but a "sounding brass and a tink- 
ling cymbal." 

Now, I know that 

"This doctrine to 
The dark earth seems strange, and yet 'tis true. 
Angels their endless blessedness renew 
Only in laboring for the world below ; 
Their added labors added loves bestow." 



150 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE WAY TO LIFE OPEN FOR ALL. 

The question has often been asked, Will there be 
anything like a probation after the close of our present 
life to those who had died in darkness in reference to 
the light of the divine truth ? To answer this ques- 
tion, we should understand another one nearly re- 
lated to this. Will any intelligent beings be com- 
pletely happy through all eternity who have never 
had a choice in the matter — who have never had the 
subject presented to them for their consideration and 
decision, but were drawn into an eternal condition of 
happiness by some irresistible force, without having 
their wish and will consulted. Virtue and vice can 
exist only where an intelligent being, of his own free 
choice, obeys laws or rebels against established authori- 
ties. The introduction of evil into our world is, ac- 
cording to our standard authorities, the result of the 
transgression of a well defined and clearly expressed 
law. Angels who kept not their first estate are said 
to have rebelled against the highest authority of the 
universe, and consequently lost their possession, and 



THE WAY TO LIFE OPEN FOR ALL. 151 

were cast out from their habitation among the good 
and the holy, and "are reserved under chains of 
darkness unto the judgment of the great day." 

It is supposed by some that angels, and all the in- 
telligent hosts in the angel world, had to pass a state 
of probation, and be subjected to some moral trial, in 
which they could manifest a love and respect for the 
Divine Creator, before they could fully meet with the 
divine approval. 

"I made them just and right, sufficient to have stood, 
Though free to fall." 

If men, living in this life, and arriving at years in 
which they are capable of discerning between good 
and evil, can only secure the divine favor by a choice 
of the good and a voluntary turning away from the 
evil, is it in accordance with the analogies of grace 
to force millions of beings into a state of happiness 
against their choice, and unalterably fix their state 
without any condition on their part? 

Now, if we admit that all infants, dying before they 
are capable of complying with any conditions of sal- 
vation, go to heaven, in virtue of the atonement made 
by Christ Jesus, then we must allow that millions of our 
race will go to heaven whether they will or not, and 
must remain there, no matter what their inclinations 
might be to tear themselves away from divine influ- 
ence and restraints. 

The mere accident of an early death would secure 
eternal happiness to the innumerable multitude of in- 
fants, while the misfortune of a prolonged existence 



152 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

in a world of suffering would expose millions more to 
endless suffering and torments in a conscious exist- 
ence. We will suppose a case, which, according to 
the commonly received doctrines, will be a fair state- 
ment of this after-death probation. It is generally 
believed, and taught from the pulpit and by theologi- 
cal writers, that honest heathens who do the best they 
can, according to the light they have, will be saved. 
It is further taught and believed that friends will rec- 
ognize one another in heaven, and that there will be 
means, or a language, through which the "family in 
heaven" will understand each other, and there will 
be an interchange of thoughts and feelings. This 
being so, it is quite presumable that we will retain our 
memory of the events of our earth life. " Son, re- 
member that thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good 
things," etc., said Abraham to the rich man in hell. 
Being, then, possessed of memory and means of com- 
municating our thoughts and feelings, a most natural 
conclusion would be that the incidents of our past lives 
would come up, and we would tell of our toils and 
struggles through life to gain the shores of immortal 
bliss. Some of the old Jews might tell that through 
faith they saw the coming Savior, and worshiped Him 
through the types and ceremonies of their law, and 
through these foreshadowings of the Great Redeemer 
they obtained the prize of an endless life. 

The Christian, who lived under the Gospel dispensa- 
tion, might tell of sufferings, persecution, and, in some 
cases, of martyrdom, and how, by faith in a reveeald 



THE WAY TO LIFE OPEN FOR ALL. 153 

Savior, he conquered all and gained the promised 
rest. And seated around these Jews and Christians 
there might be those who "came from the east and 
from the west, and from the north and from the 
south," from heathen lands and amid the splendors 
and glories of heaven ; they could tell nothing of a 
revealed Savior — had never heard His name — and 
now for the first time a divine light from the In- 
carnate and now glorified Savior breaks upon their 
vision. Will not the question naturally come up with 
regard to the acceptance or rejection of this Savior? 
Is it not said by the apostle, " Every knee shall bow 
to Him and every tongue confess?" But this must be 
a voluntary bowing of the knee and a voluntary con- 
fession with the tongue; and if voluntary, then it will 
be a matter of choice, and if a matter of choice, then 
a probation. 

If these conclusions are not just, and in accordance 
with the analogies of grace and the divine economy 
of man's moral restoration, then we are forced to 
the unreasonable conclusion that millions of souls 
will be forced to accept of Christ as their Savior 
without their own choice. But the objector will 
say that those who came up through heathen lands 
have done the best they could according to the 
light they had, and consequently they are entitled to 
an admission through the gates into the celestial city. 
It will be claimed that they have been saved by and 
through Christ before they left this world. We may 
admit this, and still contend that at some time and in 



154 



LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



some way they must give a personal assent to this 
scheme of moral restoration through Christ — they 
must believe in Him as their Savior, and submit to the 
laws of His spiritual kingdom. 

The same may be said of all infants who die before 
it is possible for them to obtain a knowledge of the 
plan of salvation. They will have a revelation of the 
great truths contained in the Gospel in their spirit 
life, and will, with all the saved from heathen lands, 
be required to acquiesce in the plan of man's salva- 
tion. This will amount to a trial or a probation. It 
recognizes a self- determining power, or a choice ot 
that which is right and good, and a voluntary turning 
away from evil. This self-determining power is a 
fundamental principle of all virtue and goodness. 

In this argument we leave out of the question 
those who have had a full and clear statement of the 
case made to them in this life. We only contend for 
a fair trial for all in every age of the world, under 
every possible condition of life, and under the influ- 
ence of the different religious systems that have pre- 
vailed in the world. 

Two factors enter into all the religious systems of 
the world. The first is the recognition of an Infi- 
nitely Wise Being, full of goodness, and willing to 
communicate His will to His intelligent creatures. 
And the second is a willingness on the part of man to 
receive communications from his Creator, and to estab- 
lish a communion between the dependent creature, 
and the All-wise and Almighty Creator. With some 



THE WAY TO LIFE OPEN FOR ALL. 155 

modifications and explanations, the theory of Dr. A. 
Winchell* will, perhaps, be received by all who have 
given serious thought to this subject as a fair and 
clear statement of the relation of our race to the In- 
finite Father. In his Deductions from Theistic Prop- 
ositions he says: "We have found out a being infi- 
nitely powerful, wise and good. We know another 
being finite, imperfect, and consciously responsi- 
ble to the first for all His acts. We find this finite 
being infinitely correlated to the Infinite One — the 
product of His creation, dependent, an offender against 
His justice, the recipient of His goodness, hopeful of 
His mercy, aspiring to present and future happiness. 
We find him longing for communion with a loving 
God, a loving God desiring for communion with His 
feeble subject. What, now, I ask, is probable in the 
case ? What is probable if we reason as in a court of 
justice in reference to the influence of motives ? 

"1. It is probable that this communion will be 
established. It will not be alone the voice of prayer 
ascending from the subject to the ear of God. It will 
also be a response coming down to the consciousness 
of the petitioner. It will be a communication of good 
tidings, of good will and of providential purposes. 
This will be the common privilege of humanity. 

"In exceptional cases itwill become remarkably 
clear and complete." 

Dr. Winchell, advancing beyond the conceptions of 
narrow-minded theologians, who fail to see much hope 

* Reconciliation of Science and Religion, p. 201. 



156 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

for our helpless humanity outside of their own creeds, 
opens a wide door for men of every form of religious 
worship. He says : 

" 2. It is probable that, in the history of the world, 
numerous instances would occur in which these ex- 
traordinary communications would be put on record 
and preserved as written revelations from God; and 
that bodies of such writings would become the sacred 
books of the peoples to whom they were communi- 
cated. 

" 3. There is no antecedent improbability that these 
communications would come to representatives of va- 
rious races and peoples. Infinite Goodness, would 
be as likely to favor one race as another ; and no race 
would be expected to perform the superhuman work 
of consulting the records of all other races, in search 
of the mind of God. 

' Who shall say that to no mortal 
Heaven e'er oped its mystic portal, 
Gave no dream or revelation, 
Save to one peculiar nation? 
Souls sincere, now voiceless, nameless, 
Knelt at altars fired and flameless, 
Asked of Nature, asked of Reason, 
Sought through every sign and season, 
Seeking God ; through darkness groping, 
Waiting, striving, longing, hoping, 
Weeping, praying, panting, pining, 
For the light on Israel shining ! 
Oh ! it must be ! God's sweet kindness 
Pities erring human blindness ; 
And the soul whose pure endeavor 
Strives toward God, shall live forever: 
Live by the Great Father's favor, 
Saved by an unheard of Savior.' " 



THE WAY TO LIFE OPEN FOR ALL. 157 

But this Savior, as already stated, will finally be 
revealed to every longing soul. The prayers and 
earnest endeavors to find truth and follow it will go 
up a memorial before God, from heathen as well as 
from Christian lands. 

Dr. Winchell says : " If God has written His name 
upon every human heart, then the feeblest and most 
inadequate gropings after the presence of God should 
command our respect ; and the rude dance and ghast- 
ly sacrifice should excite our pity for those who, like 
children crying in the night, feel that a Comforter 
exists, though they know not how to search. And 
though we can neither bow the knee at the mosque of 
Islam nor shrine of Buddha, let it be remembered 
that the adherents of these religious systems are 
moved by the self-same spirit of devotion as leads us 
to the temple of Christian worship." 

While the Christian Scriptures shed a superior 
light upon us, for "out of Zion the perfection of 
beauty God hath shined," we should cherish sympa- 
thy and hope for the millions of our race less favor- 
ably situated, remembering 

"There is a Higher Law from heaven descending; 
It hath no stain nor flaw — all men befriending; 
It lifts the lowly and abuses none. 
All families of earth shall yet become 
Like flowers in one garden beautified 
From one pure source. The vain, the impious pride 
Of color, cast and fashion, now adored, 
Then perish, by no angel heart deplored." 

It is a difficult matter, however, for those who have 

inclosed themselves within the narrow limits of their 



158 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

peculiar creeds, to allow a chance for salvation to any 
outside of their sects who will not and cannot con- 
scientiously pronounce their "shibboleth." No one 
familiar with the history of the church will deny the 
singular and strange facts, that in proportion as the 
idea of eternal damnation to all outside of the church 
took possession on the minds of men the persecuting 
spirit became stronger, and men considered themselves 
the commissioned instruments, in the hands of God, 
to inflict punishment upon their fellow-men for the 
sake of their diiferent opinions. The bloody perse- 
cutions of past ages speak volumes on this subject. 

As the human heart opens to God and becomes 
receptive to His divine influence, so it opens to suffer- 
ing humanity and cherishes desires and hopes for 
every homeless wanderer from his Father's house. To 
such, the beautiful parable of the returning prodigal 
son flashes a stream of light over the deepest gloom 
of human helplessness and human sorrows. 

While I believe in a Savior that comes to suffering 
humanity and will deal with all His creatures accord- 
ing to the principles of eternal justice and right, and 
"will reward every man according to his works," I 
also believe that a fearful punishment awaits those 
who have persisted in sin and wrong against light 
and knowledge and the convictions of an enlightened 
conscience. 

I believe that Christ is here and works among us 
now, as of old ; though not in physical form, yet, by 
His influence and through His representatives, He 



THE WAY TO LIFE OPEN FOR ALL. 159 

comes to us to try our patience, faith and hope, and, 
above all, our labor of love for His cause, and will 
hold us to a strict account for our stewardship. 

" So long as human lips remain unfed, 
Men starve their Christ for lack of coarsest bread ; 
Wherever a single bondsman fettered stands, 
Men chain their Christ and bind their Savior's hands ; 
Wherever a single orphan inly dies, 
Or grows embruted in their factories, 
Like old King Herod, they again condemn • 
To death the infant Lord of Bethlehem ; 

And when they spurn the outcast from their doors, 
While the thick darkness sweeps along the plain, 
They drive out Christ into the storm and rain — 
Frozen, to perish on the barren moors." 

"Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto one of the 
least of these, ye have not done it unto Me," said 
Jesus. 

In the final reckoning up of accounts it will be 

found that 

" Eyes with the bitter tear of misery dim 
Shall weep no more. The Savior of the poor 
Shall visible stand, bowing His sacred head, 
Beneath the rafters of the lowest shed, 
And kiss the pallid lips of agony, 
And smooth the wrinkles of the furrowed brow ; 
I thank thee, Lord, Thou comest here and now." 

And who shall stand in the day of His coming ? 
Thousands will come from heathen lands and bow the 
knee to the divine Christ, and choose Him and own 
Him as their Lord, after having for the first time ob- 
tained a view of the glory of His spiritual kingdom. 



160 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

They take Him as their Savior, although unknown to 
them in the darkness of their heathen life on earth. But 
how will it be with the inhabitants of old Capernaum ? 
Sodom and Gomorrah will stand ahead of Corozain 
and Bethsaida in the final reckoning. He who knew 
his Master's will and did it not shall be beaten with 
many stripes. But here comes a bewildered-looking 
crowd from the darkness of pagan lands. For the 
first time they see the "Ancient of days upon a great 
white throne." They reverently bow the knee, and 
with adoring wonder look up to Him and say, "This 
must be Him whom in our darkness we struggled long 
and hard to find. We gladly take Him for our Sav- 
ior." Others, again, with the same determining 
power, may turn away from this divine light and say, 
"We love our darkness better than the light," and to 
darkness they will go — it is their own choice. 

But how will the matter stand with the cold-hearted, 
selfish, bigoted, pharisaical hypocrite whose sympa- 
thies were never touched with human sorrows ? They 
may say, " We were told at the revival meeting it is 
' only look to Jesus and live.' The hymn 'In my 
hands no prize I bring ' was an especial favorite, and 
so we came empty handed to the church." 

Yes, and to Christ's poor. I shall never forget a 
scene I witnessed on Monroe street, in Chicago, dur- 
ing the great Moody and Sankey revival. A poor, 
half-clad woman, with her child in rags, seated on the 
sidewalk. The Savior had sent her there to try the 
faith of Christians. Sadness was depicted upon her 



THE WAY TO LIFE OPEN FOR ALL. 161 

haggard countenance. The wealthy and fine-dressed 
crowd surged by. The woman sat with upturned eye, 
shivering in the cold. I stood and looked till hundreds 
had passed, and yet not one penny dropped into her 
half-palsied hand. They had just been taught in the 
great Tabernacle that all they had to do was to be- 
lieve and be saved. Be assured, dear reader, in that 
great day 

" Old frauds shall come to light, and witnesses 
Long buried in the dungeons of the seas 
Shall speak out audibly — 

Great names that now 
Stand loftily and proud with laureled brow 
Shall shrivel as a parchment cast in flames — 
White hands shall then grow red with bloody stains." 

The prophets of old wept over the fate of their 
people when there was no revelation — at least none 
clearly expressed — of eternal hell of physical suffer- 
ing, yet they knew that the just judgment of the 
Almighty would finally fall upon every wrong-doer. 
The promises and threatenings mostly referred to this 
life, yet the Psalmist says, "Rivers of water run down 
mine eyes because they keep not thy law." The 
Judge of all the earth will do right, and "he that 
doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath 
done," and there is no respecter of persons with God. 

Our highest conception of an infinitely wise and 
holy being, the Creator and Preserver of all things, 
must be a willingness, on His part, to care for the 
wants of His dependents. Not only caring for those 



162 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

whom the accidents of birth in different localities and 
the most favorable surroundings have placed in com- 
fortable positions in society, but also for the poor out- 
casts who have gravitated down the lowest plane of 
life. As in the wide realms of nature, so in the moral 

spheres, 

" God worketh everywhere, 
And everywhere from one divine decree, 
Urging all forms to one high destiny, 
Shaping all things in wisdom from His will — 
And oh, how calm He works! and oh, how still! 
And works from centers outward to extremes, 
Diffusing through all forms the tempered beams 
Of love and wisdom perfect and divine, 
Through them outworking through all space and time, 
And everywhere outfashioning the same 
Great purpose of His being." 

But, as the moral rises almost infinitely above the 
material, we may expect more attention from the In- 
finite Father to that life which came from Him than 
that which is bestowed on lifeless matter. If 

" He works with a master hand 
In every sun and every grain of sand," 

to make forms of beauty from the crude materials, we 
may well conclude that He will cast an eye of pity 
and of love on the unfortunate and the fallen, and 
gather all who are willing to come to Him into His 
kingdom, to inherit the mansions prepared by the 
Divine Savior. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS ON THE SUBJECT. 163 



CHAPTER XV. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS ON THE SUBJECT. 

We now come to examine what may be called the 
Bible doctrine of this question of other inhabited 
worlds than ours. Here we do not find even the ap- 
pearance of opposition, such as the geologist had to 
encounter in his researches into the past history of 
the earth. There is not a single expression in the 
Bible in opposition to the great truth we are contend- 
ing for. But, on the contrary, there are many pas- 
sages of Scripture that will scarcely admit of any other 
explanation than that they teach the doctrine of dif- 
ferent worlds, inhabited by intelligent beings, subject 
to the control of the one Almighty Creator, and the 
objects of his care. The language employed by the 
Hebrew prophets and poets, in describing the vastness 
of creation, and magnifying the power of an Infinite 
Creator, is as appropriate now to the devout soul as it 
could possibly be, had it been uttered with a full 
knowledge of the latest discoveries in astronomy. 



164 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

Whence, but through a divine inspiration, could these 
men, in many instances unskilled in the arts and sci- 
ences of their day, have obtained these sublime truths. 
If we compare their language with the descriptions of 
the wisest among heathen philosophers on the struct- 
ure of the universe, we will find that of the former 
awe-inspiring, and calculated to kindle a flame of de- 
votion and praise to the Creator, while that of the 
latter does not rise above a childish fancy, resulting 
from an imperfect knowledge of the physical universe. 
If the Psalmist, looking out upon the starry heavens 
in a cloudless sky, had had no higher thoughts of the 
nature and structure of the celestial vault than that 
entertained by the astronomers of his day we see no 
reason why he should express a surprise that God 
should be mindful of man. To the ancients the stars 
and the sun and moon were fixed in a solid sphere. 
If they were viewed by the Psalmist as so many twink- 
ling lights of lifeless matter, why should he exclaim, 
on beholding them, " When I consider thy heavens, 
the works of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which 
thou hast ordained : what is man that thou art mind- 
ful of him ? and the son of man that thou visitest 
him ? " Psalm viii. 3-4. Would he not very naturally 
conclude that man made after God's image was of 
more importance than these little specks of light, or 
even than the more conspicuous moon? That inspi- 
ration which dictated the sublime utterances in refer- 
ence to God's providential care over His creatures on 
this earth, also led his enraptured vision beyond the 



BIBLE TEACHINGS ON THE SUBJECT. 165 

boundaries of terrestrial nature, and opened his pro- 
phetic eyes to see other worlds inhabited by races of 
immortal beings, equally as deserving of divine care 
and protection as the dwellers on our earth, and per- 
haps more exalted in the scale of wisdom and power 
and more loyal to the divine government than we are. 
These views of different and distant worlds naturally 
excited an exclamation of surprise. "What is man 
that thou art mindful of him ? " If the starry 
heavens and the changing moon and the bright sun 
itself were nothing more important than the concep- 
tions of the ancients made them, and if men on earth 
were the only responsible race, in physical form, in 
God's universe, with a knowledge of the superiority 
of mind and intelligence over lifeless matter, no mat- 
ter how colossal the material structures might be we 
should expect the Psalmist to exclaim, what are these 
little things compared with the dignity and destinies of 
immortal minds? 

But, viewing other worlds teeming with life and in- 
telligence, he found himself and his entire race com- 
paratively insignificant when viewed in connection with 
one stupendous whole of moving and shining worlds 
teeming with living beings. The Psalmist, in his 
sublime meditations, very evidently referred to a plu- 
rality of worlds when he speaks of the heavens, the 
moon and the stars. He could not refer to celestial 
space, nor some indefinable place where spirits and 
angels are supposed to dwell, but must have had ref- 
erence to a material creation, as the work of God's 



166 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

finger, brought into an actual existence for some glo- 
rious purpose. The language of the Bible often con- 
veys the idea of life in these worlds whose creation is 
spoken of, separate from the earth. Job tells us that 
God, who spread out the heavens, made "Arcturus, 
Orion and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the 
south."* The Prophet Amos speaks of him "that 
buildeth his stories in the heaven." f In reference 
to this passage, Dr. Adam Clarke, in his commentary, 
says : " There may be here a reference to the various 
systems which God has formed in illimitable space, 
transcending each other as planets do in our solar 
system. * * * There may be millions of millions of 
stellar systems in unlimited space ; and then what are 
all these to the vast immensity of God." Moses, in 
his account of the creation, J says, " Thus the heav- 
ens and the earth were finished, and all the host of 
them." Here Dr. Clarke remarks: "The word host 
signifies literally an army, composed of a number of 
companies of soldiers under their respective leaders ; 
and seems here elegantly to apply to the various 
celestial bodies in our system, placed by divine wis- 
dom under the influence of the sun." The following 
arrangement of Scripture passages is taken from Sir 
David Brewster's More Worlds than One: 

"Nehemia, in his thank offerings to God, says, 
' Thou hast made heaven and the heaven of heavens 
with all their hosts, and the host of heaven worship 
thee.'§ 

* Job, ix. 8. t Amos, ix. 6. t Gen. ii. 1. £ Neh. ix. 6. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS ON THE SUBJECT. 167 

" The Psalmist speaks of 'the host of the heavens as 
made by the breath of God's mouth'* (the process 
by which He gave life to Adam) ; and Isaiah furnishes 
us with a striking passage, in which the occupants of 
the earth and of the heavens are separately described. 
' I have made the earth, and created man upon it : I, 
even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and 
all their host have I commanded.' f But, in addition 
to these obvious references to life and things pertain- 
ing to life, we find in Isaiah the following remarkable 
passage : ' For thus saith the Lord that created the 
heavens, God himself that formed the earth and made 
it ; he hath established it, he created it NOT IN vain, 
he formed it to be inhabited.'! Here we have a 
distinct declaration from the inspired Prophet, that the 
earth would have been created in vain if it had not 
been formed to be inhabited ; and hence we draw the 
conclusion, that as the Creator cannot be supposed to 
have made the worlds of our system and those in the 
sidereal universe in vain, they must have been formed 
to be inhabited. 

" In the New Testament we find passages not only 
in perfect harmony with the doctrine of a plurality of 
worlds, but which cannot be well explained without 
admitting it to be true. When St. John tells us that 
the worlds were made by the word of God,§ and St. 
Paul, that by our Savior, the heir of all things, were 
made the worlds J\ we cannot suppose that they mean 

* Psalm xxxiii. 6. t Isaiah, xlv. 12. % Isaiah, xlv. 18. 

g John, i. 3. D Hebrews, i. 3. 



168 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

globes of matter revolving without inhabitants, or 
without any preparation for receiving them. Our 
Savior is described as having made all things, and 
God is spoken of as purposing to 'gather together in 
one all things in Christ which are in the heavens and 
which are on earth.' * The creations thus described, 
under the name of all things, are clearly creations in 
the heavens, or above them, for Paul tells us that 
Christ 'ascended up far above all heavens that he 
might fill all things.' 'f In another place the Apostle 
speaks of the ' mystery hid in God, who created all 
things by Jesus Christ ; to the intent that now, unto 
the principalities and powers in heavenly places, 
might be known by the church the manifold wisdom 
of God. 'J When our Savior speaks of the sheep- 
fold of which He is the door, and of the sheep who 
follow Him and know His voice, and for whom He 
was to lay down His life, He adds, i and other sheep 
1 have which are not of this fold : them also I must 
bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there shall 
be onefold and one Shepherd.' § 

" These views, as deduced from Scripture, receive 
much support from considerations of a very different 
nature. Man in his future state of existence is to 
consist, as at present, of a spiritual nature residing in 
a corporeal frame. He must live, therefore, upon a 
material planet, subject to all the laws of matter, and 
performing functions for which a material body is in- 

* Ephesians, i. 9, 10. t Ephesians, iv. 10. 

X Ephesians, iii. 9, 11. § John, x. 16. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS ON THE SUBJECT. 169 

dispensable. We must, consequently, find for the race 
of Adam, if not for races that may have preceded him, 
a material home upon which they may reside, or from 
which they may travel by means unknown to us, to 
other localities in the universe.* At the present hour 
the inhabitants of the earth are over a thousand mil- 
lions; and by whatever process we may compute the 
numbers that have existed before the present genera- 
tion, and estimate those that are yet to inherit the 
earth, we shall obtain a population which the habit- 
able parts of our globe could not possibly accommo- 
date. If there is not room, then, on our earth for 
the millions of millions of beings who have lived and 
died upon its surface, and who may yet live and die 
during the period fixed for its occupation by man, 
we can scarcely doubt that their future abode must 
be on some of the primary or secondary planets 
of the solar system, whose inhabitants have ceased 
to exist like those on the earth, or upon planets in 

* " It seems to accord best with the goodness of God, and with the man- 
ner in which the universe is made, to suppose that every portion of it 
may be visited, and become successively the abode of the redeemed ; that 
they may pass from world to world, and survey the wonders and the 
works of God as they are displayed in different worlds. The universe so 
vast seems to have been fitted up for such a purpose, and nothing else 
that we can conceive of will be so adapted to give employment without 
weariness to the minds that God has made in the interminable durations 
before them."— Barnes' Commentary on Peter, iii. 10. 

" The study of the heavens," says the Rev. Mr. Crampton in his charm- 
ing little volume, The Lunar World, " is the study of the glory of God. 
If, then, it be permitted to man hereafter, like those bright spirits of 
whom we read in Holy Writ, to roam with the speed of light from world 
to world, from planet to planet, and from sun to sun, astronomy is no lost 
science, and the time that we have given to it is no lost time, for we 
shall only enter upon its fuller attainment in the world to come."— P. 86. 



170 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

our own or in other systems which have been in a 
state of preparation, as our earth was, for the advent 
of intellectual life. 

" The connexion thus indicated between the desti- 
nies of the human family and the material system to 
which we belong, arising from the limited extent of 
the earth's habitable surface and its unlimited popu- 
lation, is a strong corroboration of the views which we 
have deduced from Scripture. In the world of in- 
stinct the superabundance of life is controlled by the 
law of mutual destruction, which reigns in the earth, 
the ocean and the air; but the swarm of human life, 
increasing in an incalculable ratio, both in the old 
and the new world, has never been perceptibly re- 
duced by the scythe of famine, of pestilence, or of 
war; and, when we consider the length of time dur- 
ing which this accumulation may proceed, we cannot 
justly challenge the correctness of the conclusion that 
this earth is not to be the future residence of the nu- 
merous family which it has been destined to rear." 

It is not unreasonable to suppose that other worlds 
may have produced as large, or perhaps a much larger 
number of inhabitants than our world, yet all these 
multiplied a million-fold will find ample room in the 
vast domain of one common Father, whose omniscient 
eye sees all the desires of his dependent children and 
whose almighty hand can supply all their wants. 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 171 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 

Among the first things in the mind of an intelli- 
gent and thoughtful traveler, in his preparation to 
visit a new country, is a desire to obtain some knowl- 
edge of the country he is about to visit — some out- 
line of its geography, and the manners and customs 
of its inhabitants, and the language through which 
they communicate their thoughts to each other. 

But while this is true with regard to the dwellers 
on the different parts of our globe, and entirely prac- 
tical, it is not so easy for us to gain an accurate 
knowledge of the character and real condition of the 
dwellers on the other shore. There are many who 
contend that the Bible gives them all the information 
they want, and just such information as will enable 
them to draw a picture of heaven to suit a lively 
imagination. The life-like imagery drawn by the 



172 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

revelations of St. John afford an abundance of matter 
for the construction of a beautiful heavenly home, 
surrounded by enchanting scenery and a glorious 
company. 

Then the poets may soar on fancy's wings and tell 
us of "rocks and hills, and brooks and vales flowing 
with milk and honey" — of "high and flowery plains, 
where our spirits ne'er shall tire," etc. Another poet 



" No calm below is like that calm above, 
No regions here are like those realms of love, 
Earth's softest spring ne'er shed so soft a light, 
Earth's brightest summer never shone so bright." 

The Savior tells us of "many mansions in the 
Father's house," and St. Paul expresses "a desire to 
depart and be with Christ." Yet, after all, no one 
can tell just how we shall exist. That we shall have 
a form resembling our earthly form is very evident, or 
there could be no recognition of friends in the spirit 
world. But what will be the extent of our spiritual 
powers, and the range of our spiritual vision, and in 
what kind of language we will communicate our 
thoughts to those around us, must all be left to the 
unfoldment of the future. 

Such, however, is our relation to the spirit world 
that it appears to me quite proper for us to extend our 
inquiries into that future state into which we all ex- 
pect soon to enter. We are here to-day, but may not 
be here to-morrow. One thing is certain to us all, we 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 173 

will not always remain here. We are on the outward- 
bound train, and moving at a rapid rate toward a 
world that is now concealed from our natural vision, 
as much so as was the new world to Columbus when 
standing on the shores of Spain looking out over the 
trackless ocean in the direction he expected to sail to 
find this new world. He saw the distant world in 
visions of faith, while the evidences on which his 
faith rested were found in those deep impressions that 
often so strangely come to the soul looking and long- 
ing for light and truth. It may be that the Infinite 
Father comes to us here and now, through mediums 
of his own selection, to instill into the mind some of 
those great discoveries that men call accidental, but 
should be called providential. Who can tell what 
secret and invisible agencies were at work with 
Newton, Harvey, Jenner, Kepler, Galileo, Columbus 
and thousands of others, while they were studying out 
the great problems that have resulted in so much good 
to our race. 

Mr. Wesley, in his sermon on Good Angels, says : 
"They may assist us in our search after truth, remove 
many doubts and difficulties, throw light on what was 
before dark and obscure, and confirm us in the truth 
that is after godliness. They may warn us of evil 
in disguise, and place what is good in a clear and 
strong light. They may gently move our will to 
embrace what is good and fly from that which is 
evil. They may many times quicken our dull af- 
fections, increase our holy hope or filial fear, and 



174 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

assist us more ardently to love Him who first 
loved us. Yea, they may be sent of God to answer 
that whole prayer, put into our mouths by pious 
Bishop Kenn : 

" ' 0, may Thy angels, while I sleep, 
Around my head their vigils keep, 
Their love angelical instill, 
Stop every avenue to ill ; 
May they celestial joys rehearse, 
And thought to thought with me converse !' 

"Although the manner of this we shall not be able 
to explain while we dwell in the body." 

Wesley believed that we were surrounded with the 
angel worlds, and that they had much to do in the 
affairs of this life. 

I am satisfied that we might know much more 
about a future life, and have more sublime concep- 
tions of the great and wondrous worlds above us and 
around us, and a clearer knowledge of our relations 
to other worlds as members of one great family, if 
our hearts were more open and free to receive such 
impressions as these celestial messengers are ready 
and willing to bring to us. Our knowledge, like 
many other gifts of nature, grows from germs of 
thought that may be projected into the mind like 
seeds with downy wings that are scattered over the 
receptive soil. 

It is a cheerless atheism that starts up worlds from 
nebulus matter or fire-mists, and projects them into 
space by blind chance, and allows them to run their 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 175 

wanderous cycle and then return to primal chaos ; 
and it is the gross materialism of our age that shuts 
up every avenue of the soul against those hallowed 
influences that come to us from sister spirits and from 
brother spirits, that help to make up the great " family 
in heaven and on earth"* 

Mr. Charles Wesley expresses this beautifully when 
he says : 

" One family, we dwell in Him ; 
One church above, beneath, 
Though now divided by the stream — 
The narrow stream of death." 

Mr. Bonar gives a still different view of the close 
connection of our present state and the life on the 
other side when he says : 

"Surely, yon heaven, where angels see God's face, 

Is not so distant as we deem 
From this low earth ! 'Tis but a little space, 

The narrow crossing of a slender stream; 
'Tis but a vail, which winds might blow aside ; 

Yes, these are all that us of earth divide 
From the bright dwelling of the Glorified — 

The land of which I dream." 

The interest that every living, thinking and loving 
soul has in a plurality of worlds and the unity of the 
whole family under one Infinite Head, with many 
millions of subordinate laborers through the boundless 
fields of life, rises in magnitude beyond the highest 
conception of mortal minds. It is only when we step 

• Eph. iii. 15. 



176 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

out of these walls of " earthly dust and human clay" 
that we will begin to see the grandeur of this uni- 
versal empire. We will then find that the bright 
stars that now adorn our nocturnal heavens, like so 
many bridal gems of night, are worlds aglow with life 
and beauty. 

A knowledge of the physical structure of the uni- 
verse, such as we gain from the study of astronomy, 
furnishes us with a key by which we unlock many of 
the hidden mysteries of nature, and walk through her 
temples and halls and high court-yards with adoring 
wonder, and trace a designing hand in every arrange- 
ment for the support of life ; and with this knowledge 
comes a profound veneration for that Infinite Creator 
who has so wisely arranged the different worlds for the 
support of all forms of life. 

The husbandman who has his farm and buildings 
so arranged as to shelter and protect animal and vege- 
table life, and furnishes supplies sufficient for the de- 
mands of those who depend on him, deserves the 
approval of all his neighbors; and in proportion as 
the flocks and herds are multiplied, and fields are 
added to fields and farms to farms, so will be increased 
the respect for a man who manages his affairs for the 
good of his numerous dependents. Kings and con- 
querors who have ruled in righteousness have been 
honored by their subjects, and the larger the kingdom 
so much the more profound will be the respect for the 
sovereign who rules wisely and for the good of his 
subjects. 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 177 

If we carry this thought into the realm of other 
worlds, and from spirit life to million forms of life, 
from the lowest to the highest orders, both in physical 
and spirit form, and then, by following the analogy 
of life from one world to other worlds in untold num- 
bers, we find a dominion and a ruler before whom an 
intelligent universe may bow with the profoundest 
reverence, and with united voice exclaim : " The Lord 
God omnipotent reigneth! " 

The man that is brought up in a factory where pins 
are made, and where points of pins and needles are 
the constant objects of his attention, will gradually 
find his mind narrowed down to a very small point; 
while the man who manages the sledge hammer of a 
forge, or directs the movement of a powerful engine, 
will have his views of the world enlarged by the same 
law by which the muscles in the blacksmith's arms 
gain strength from constantly wielding the ponderous 
hammer. It is by moving out from narrow circles to 
extended fields of labor and of thought that higher 
conceptions of the works and wonders of creation are 
excited. That many have been mistaken in their views 
in speculative astronomy there can be no doubt, but 
these mistakes have been way-marks to those who 
have followed the earlier astronomers ; and thus, piece 
by piece, has the mighty structure been reared through 
which we move out from our narrow home on earth to 
the contemplation of worlds beyond worlds, in almost 
endless progression, under the same Divine Father's 
care and protection. 

12 



178 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

The distinguished astronomer Huyghens, in his 
Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, says: 

"If any one shall gravely tell me that I have spent 
my time idly, in a vain and fruitless inquiry after 
what I never can become sure of, the answer is that, 
at this rate, he would put down all natural philosophy, 
as far as it concerns itself, in searching into the nature 
of such things. In such noble and sublime studies as 
these, 'tis glory to arrive at probability, and the search 
itself rewards the pains. But there are many degrees 
of probable, some nearer to the truth than others, in 
the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our 
judgment. And besides the nobleness and the pleas- 
ure of the studies, may we not be so bold as to say 
that they are no small help to the advancement of 
wisdom and morality?" 

Mr. R. A. Proctor, in his late work on Myths and 
Marvels of Astronomy, says : 

" The interest with which astronomy is studied by 
many who care little or nothing for other sciences is 
due chiefly to the thoughts which the celestial bodies 
suggest respecting life in other worlds than ours. 
There is no feeling more deeply seated in the human 
heart — not the belief in higher than human powers, not 
the hope of immortality, not even the fear of death — 
than the faith in realms of life where other condi- 
tions are experienced than those we are acquainted 
with here. It is not vulgar curiosity or idle fancy 
that suggests the possibility of life in other worlds. 
It has been the conviction of the profoundest thinkers, 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 179 

of men of the highest imagination. The mystery of 
the star depths has had its charm for the mathemati- 
cian as well as for the poet ; for the exact observer as 
for the most faithful theorizer ; nay, for the man of 
business as for him whose life is passed in communing 
with nature. If we analyze the interest with which 
the generality of men inquire into astronomical mat- 
ters apparently not connected with the question of life 
in other worlds, we find, in every case, that it has been 
out of this question alone, or chiefly that, that inter- 
est has sprung." 

Science has done much, during the past two hundred 
years, toward constructing highways of thought across 
the mighty chasms that, to our material senses, sepa- 
rates the different worlds of the universal empire ; and 
if, in this daring onward march of science, there has 
been witnessed an apparent clash with the teachings 
of the Bible, it has only awakened the defenders of a 
divine revelation to a more critical examination and 
more rational exegesis of this revelation. 

To cultivate religion, with its emotions upon our 
spiritual nature and its supernaturalism, to the neglect 
of scientific knowledge, might bring a return of the 
superstition and barbarism of the dark ages of the 
world, when all progressive ideas that did not harmo- 
nize with the superstitions of the age were crushed 
by those in power. On the other hand, science with- 
out the influence of religion on our moral nature 
would rush us headlong into the vortex of infidelity 
and unrestrained sensualism. 



180 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

The moral world demands, and the happiness of our 
race requires, that science and religion shall move 
harmoniously through this world of conflicting forces, 
each to exert a salutary and restraining influence on 
the other, and rejoice in their conquests over material 
and moral nature. 

The difference between advocates of different creeds 
of the Christian churches is not greater than the dif- 
ference of philosophers in reference to the nature of 
the sun in the center of our solar system. But, shall 
we doubt sunshine because men differ about the nature 
and cause of solar heat and the structure of the sun ? 
By no means. The Bible, professedly, deals in mys- 
teries that rise above our conception, and presents to 
us a Being who, in all His attributes, is above the 
comprehension of finite minds. It is not strange that 
the sublime truths emanating from this infinite, source, 
clothed in the poverty of human language, should ap- 
pear obscure to many, and should be differently inter- 
preted, and, consequently, make different impressions 
on the diversified classes of readers and hearers. The 
bitterness with which men of different opinions have 
assailed their opponents has, no doubt, often arisen 
from the deep convictions produced on the mind by a 
truth coming through a divine inspiration, producing 
a zeal of which was begotten a dogmatism that has 
blinded the spiritual vision and uprooted those feel- 
ings of forbearance and charity which the sacred pre- 
cepts are so well calculated to implant in the human 
heart. We have a striking illustration of this want 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 181 

of charity toward opponents in a work recently pub- 
lished, entitled The Final Philosophy or System of 
Perfectable Knowledge Issuing from the Harmony of 
Science and Religion, by Charles Woodruff Shields, 
D. D., Professor in Princeton College. On page 262 
of this work the author says, after speaking of the 
different religious creeds that have found advocates in 
the old country: 

"And in the churches of the United States these 
different sectaries have simply reappeared, sowing 
broadcast the dragon-teeth of a new brood of heresies, 
embracing the additional varieties of Methodists and 
Baptists, and ranging between the gross Judaism of 
Mormon and the crude Christianism of Campbell. In 
a word, for three centuries, throughout Christendom, 
countless sects, following their different leaders, have 
gone on protesting against Protestantism, reforming 
the Reformation, purifying Puritanism, dissenting 
from Dissent, and redividing after each new division, 
down to the very dust and powder of individuality 
itself." 

This is, undoubtedly, an overdrawn picture, and 
plainly indicates the character and disposition of the 
heart from which it came. At the bottom of page 
263 he says, however : u These sects around us are 
but fragments, more or les3 alloyed, of a common 
Christianity." 

These bitter reflections on thousands who are honest 
in their convictions and verily believe they are persu- 
ing a course that will lead them to final happiness in 



182 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

the spirit world, will do no good to Christianity, but 
put an argument into the mouths of its opposers, 
founded on supposed errors where there are such dis- 
agreements. But, as already intimated, scientists, 
astronomers and philosophers differ as widely ; and yet 
there are great truths underlying all these theological 
and philosophical theories, and a better understanding 
will finally harmonize conflicting theories, and from 
them a sublimer philosophy and a purer exegesis of 
divine truth will move upon the moral chaos of our 
struggling humanity. 

" 'Tis but a little while, 
And earth again like paradise shall smile ; 
All things must ultimate in good at last, 
Freedom and truth and love their glory cast 
On happy earth, the fair and love-born child, 
On whose new birth heaven like a mother smiled." 

A cold and narrow selfishness has always drawn 
division lines between the different parts of the one 
great family of our common humanity. Cruelty and 
oppression have been the natural outgrowths of the 
power one nation or individual possessed over another. 
When people shall think less of creeds and dogmas, 
and more of the precepts contained in the sermon 
of Christ on the mount, and find a unity among all 
intelligent beings, in all worlds, under one infinite 
controlling power — as the philosopher has found 
a unity in matter of which all worlds are made — 
then we may expect to approach the era of universal 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 183 

harmony and the acknowledgment of a universal 
brotherhood, and all will acknowledge that 

"There's an Infinite Mind that all mind inspires; 
There's an Infinite Heart that man's bosom fires ; 
There's an Infinite Breath from the Infinite Soul 
Inflowing through all and beyond control. 
There's an Infinite Sphere in which all things lie ; 
It encircles all skies — 'tis the present sky. 
There's an Infinite Presence everywhere, 
And it beats like a pulse on each globe of air. 
There's an Infinite Will of an Infinite Cause, 
And it twines throughout nature's harmonic laws." 



184 LIFE LK OTHER WORLDS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT. 

No question in physical science has been more per- 
plexing to the astronomer and philosopher than that 
of solar light and heat ; not only in reference to their 
influence on our earth, but also in the probability of 
other planets of our sun system sharing in a supply 
from the same source, to make them cheerful abodes of 
life and to place that life under such conditions as to 
become morally responsible to the Divine Creator and 
Law-giver. 

The narrow views generally entertained with regard 
to the physical condition where life may exist, and the 
limited sphere in which morally accountable beings 
are supposed to exist, have been a serious barrier in the 
way of many scientific men against embracing the 
teachings of the Bible in reference to man's relations 
to God, as a violator of His law, and his restoration 
through the plan of human redemption and salvation. 

As the scientist, who in his theory confines life to 
this earth, is at a loss to know why there should be 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT. 185 

such a waste of energies in the physical structure of 
our solar system, by the radiation of light and heat 
in every direction through space, and only such a 
small fraction be utilized for the purpose of sustaining 
life on our earth, so does the man who limits the 
Creator's care for the moral wants of intelligent and 
responsible beings almost involuntarily stop to inquire 
why an infinitely intelligent Being should single out 
so comparatively insignificant a portion of His domin- 
ions for the manifestation of His love in the gift of a 
Savior to redeem a lost race. 

Now, while the astronomer and philosopher may 
indulge in speculations in reference to the sun's power 
to reach other planets, and there, as well as here, 
become the source of vitalizing energies, so may the 
Christian, in his contemplations on the divine plan of 
moral illumination and spiritual life, overleap the 
narrow boundaries of this rebellious world, and very 
justly conclude that the same spiritual sun that gives 
spiritual life to our dark world may reach different 
and distant worlds in the vast empire of the one uni- 
versal Father. 

Dr. Chalmers answers the infidel objection to 
Christianity on the ground " that Christianity is set 
up for the exclusive benefit of our minute and solitary 
world," by saying, " We challenge them to the proof 
of this announcement." "They have made their 
argument against us out of an assertion which has 
positively no ascertained facts to rest upon — an as- 
sertion which they have no means of verifying — an 



186 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

assertion, the truth or falsehood of which can only be 
gathered out of some supernatural message, for it lies 
completely beyond the range of human observation." 

It must be admitted that the astronomical objection 
urged against Christianity and the Bible comes with 
considerable force when the revelations of the Bible 
and the mission of Christ to this earth are restricted 
to one single race in the great universe. We must 
not lose sight of the fact that our earth is a very small 
part of our solar system, and this solar system is only 
one among many millions of sun systems, and accord- 
ing to the discoveries of modern astronomy, as we 
have already noticed, there are other suns controlling 
systems of planets and their satellites far superior to 
our sun. 

Our race may have been the first in rebellion against 
divine authority; but that other races, in different 
worlds, under a moral government, were equally liable 
to become transgressors, appears to be a very reason- 
able conclusion. If intelligent beings are free to 
choose the good and refuse the evil set before them, 
then other races, in other worlds, might remain in a 
state of obedience or became transgressors by their 
own choice. We are told in the Bible that even "the 
angels which kept not their first estate" were cast 
out from the divine presence ; and if these higher 
orders of intelligent beings became transgressors, why 
not others in lower spheres become involved in trans- 
gression, when exposed to the same surrounding influ- 
ence? We are not prepared to admit that the infinite 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT. 187 

plan was to place our race in a condition where rebel- 
lion would become inevitable, with a view of mani- 
festing divine compassion to this one rebellious race. 
Other races, as above stated, in all probability, were 
as liable to go astray from a prescribed course for the 
government of their lives as our race has been. The 
arguments of theologians against the astronomical 
objections of infidels too often admit what should not 
be admitted, viz., that if other races were sinners, 
then they needed a Redeemer and Savior as much as 
we do ; and if they were not thus redeemed, then Infi- 
nite Goodness would show a partiality to one obscure 
part of His intelligent subjects, and leave all others to 
suffer the consequences of their transgression without 
a provision for their deliverance. 

Dr. Chalmers makes some very interesting remarks 
in reference to the knowledge other beings in the uni- 
verse may have of the history of our redemption, and 
the interest they may have in the welfare of our race, 
and the influence it may have upon them to know 
that we have been redeemed, and have the offer of 
eternal life through the redemption by Christ. 

"The information of the Bible upon this subject is 
of two sorts — that from which we confidently gather 
the fact that the history of the redemption of our 
species is known in other and distant places of the 
creation, and that from which we indistinctly guess 
at the fact that the redemption itself may stretch be- 
yond the limits of the world we occupy."* 

* Chalmers' Revelation and Astronomy, p. 110. 



188 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

Whatever the analogies of nature may teach us in 
reference to animal and vegetable life in other worlds, 
it would be foolish and fanciful to theorize on the 
botany and peculiar forms and conditions of life in 
these different and distant worlds, and it would be 
equally so to theorize on the moral relations and con- 
ditions of their inhabitants. All our knowledge on 
these subjects must be mere conjecture. 

We cannot say whether sin has found its way into 
these worlds, nor how many messages may have gone 
to them from the Infinite Father on the subject of our 
common Christianity. For all we know, this spiritual 
kingdom, which, by its author, is compared to a grain 
of mustard seed, is destined to grow into a tree that 
shall spread its shadowing influence and life-giving 
fruit over the universal empire of worlds. 

A communication from God to different worlds, 
attested by such miracles as Infinite Wisdom might see 
proper to produce, to convince the different races of 
the divine authority of the messenger, might reveal to 
such races, in clear and definite statements, the whole 
plan of human salvation. The offer of life and future 
happiness might become as clear to them as it is to 
us. This would be no more wonderful than many of 
the transactions recorded in the New Testament. We 
may well conceive that the "angels' visits," that have 
been "few and far between" on our earth, might be- 
come a very common occurrence to other worlds. 
Angels took a deep interest in the mission of Christ 
on earth. 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT. 189 

" The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a 
dream, saying, arise and take the young child and his 
mother and flee into Egypt."* "But when Herod 
was dead, the angel of the Lord again appeared to 
Joseph, and told him to return to the land of Israel." 
Christ told His disciples that He could have twelve 
legions of angels at His command to deliver Him if 
He desired it. In His agony, before the crucifixion, 
angels appeared to Christ and strengthened Him. 
They appeared at the sepulcher after His resurrection 
and assured His anxious disciples that He had risen 
from the grave, and told them where they might meet 
Him. In a word, they sang anthems of praise at His 
advent, and accompanied Him in His ascension, and 
assured the gazing crowd, as the cloud received Him 
out of their sight, that He would come again. Now, 
looking at the Old Testament scriptures in their ac- 
count of angels appearing in human form and talking 
to men, as in the case of Abraham, Lot, Jacob, and 
others, and believing these accounts to be true, we can 
readily conceive that these celestial messengers might 
be sent to different and distant worlds, to explain to 
their inhabitants the whole plan of human redemption 
and salvation. It is very evident that the transaction 
that was to take place on Calvary at the crucifixion 
was previously known among the angels, and some, 
at least, of the disembodied spirits, for on the Mount 
of Transfiguration, in the presence of Peter and 
James and John, Moses and Elias appeared and 

Matt. ii. 13. 



190 L]FE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

talked with Him, "and spake of His decease, which 
He should accomplish at Jerusalem." 

Christ, at one time, told His disciples that He had 
other sheep, which were not of the fold to which they 
belonged, and that these also would be gathered in, 
that there might be one fold and one Shepherd. I 
now come to a point in theology, on the religious 
aspect of the question of Life in Other Worlds, where 
I may come in conflict with the thinking and believ- 
ing of some of the wise men of the past and present. 

We have looked out upon a material universe, as 
far as the teachings of the telescope will allow mortal 
man to gaze into the depths of space, and then on the 
wings of thought we have tried to soar beyond the 
range of telescopic power, and through the immeas- 
urable depths of space the imagination sees systems 
rising above and extending beyond systems, where 
our thoughts may linger in strange bewilderment and 
the mind become wearied in a vain attempt to grasp 
infinitude. All these worlds under the control of 
one almighty Creator may well excite inquiry with 
regard to the moral and religious condition of the 
dwellers on these distant shores. Is our sin-smitten 
earth the only plague spot in the universe that needs 
divine restoring and healing power? If this should 
be so, we cannot well get away from the conclusion 
that every intelligent being in the universe will be 
interested in the plan of man's moral restoration, for 
this plan brings the infinite Father into a different 
relation to all created beings. It does not produce a 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT. 191 

change in the divine existence, but a change in the 
divine relations to morally responsible beings. In 
the material universe we find a sun for every world, 
and means through which the light and heat from that 
sun may sustain the different forms of life existing in 
those worlds. In the spiritual realms we have found 
a Christ for every world of moral and intellectual be- 
ings, from the "principalities and powers in heavenly 
places" down to the darkest corner on the most distant 
globe of the material universe. That infinite Being 
who said to the Jewish law-giver, "No man can see My 
face and live," now comes in His different relation to 
His erring children and says, "Come unto Me all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." The feeble and helpless soul, longing and pant- 
ing for spiritual communion with the divine power, 
excites the pity of the infinite Father. Here came 
the thought — not the after thought, but the one great 
eternal thought and purpose of Infinity coming to 
finite beings. When these finite, created and depend- 
ent beings needed help, then the Eternal Word — the 
world-creating, life-giving and life-sustaining Power — 
comes out of eternity to the lowest plane of humanity 
to allow created beings to approach the divine through 
a glorified Christ in human or material form. In 
this form He says to all, "No man hath seen God 
at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in 
the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."* 
It was the Eternal Word — the Divine Truth. "I 

* St. John, i. 18. 



192 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

am the truth," said Christ. It is this that clothed 
itself in our humanity — that "was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, as the 
glory of the Only Begotten of the Father) full of grace 
and truth." This is what was referred to above by a 
change in the divine relations to morally responsible 
beings. The divine incarnation, then, may have, and 
undoubtedly does have, a significance reaching beyond 
our own world, yea, reaching to all worlds where men 
or angels dwell, either in redeeming acts or in admit- 
ting created beings to approach the Creator through 
this divine manifestation. Angels and archangels, 
cherubim and seraphim may be messengers to differ- 
ent worlds to explain the scenes of Calvary. The 
resurrection and triumph over the power of death ; the 
ascension amid a convoy of attending angels ; the 
seating of Christ on the right hand of the Divine 
Power — all these great truths may be revealed to ad- 
miring millions in other worlds ; and if they are trans- 
gressors, the terms of their pardon and deliverance 
may be stated to them, and the blissful songs of praise 
may go up from thousands of worlds to a divine and 
glorified Christ, who has clothed Himself in a manner 
so as to allow an approach to Him on the part of 
those whom His almighty hand had formed. Our own 
material bodies are only a part of the materials out of 
which worlds are made. Christ took upon Himself 
the same material. In that humanity glorified He 
ascended to heaven, "there to appear in the presence 
of God for us." We have, then, in His glorified 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT. 193 

humanity a microcosm of the material universe like a 
central sun shining out upon all who are willing to 
come to the Divine Light. Shall we be told, as some 
have said, "the substance of the Son has been taken 
into the subsistence of the Father;" that we have 
not now a living Christ, in form as he appeared on 
earth ? Then we may well exclaim, with Mary at the 
sepulcher, " They have taken away my Lord and I 
know not where they have laid Him ! " How often 
have we received evasive answers when we have asked 
the question, "Where is Christ?" We are told in 
heaven ; and when we ask, Where is heaven ? we 
are told, "everywhere," The prayers and creeds of 
the different orthodox churches recognize a Christ as 
risen from the dead ; but how few look at Him in the 
light of a Christ for the universe, and a medium 
through which all may approach the divine majesty 
and have manifestations of the divine glory ? Through 
His divine influence He pervades all nature, and is one 
with the Father everywhere, working by His provi- 
dential influence through all material nature, painting 
every flower, giving nourishment to every blade of 
grass, watching the falling of every sparrow, and sup- 
plying the wants of every living creature through the 
laws His hand has put in motion, and yet dwelling 
amid the splendors of the divine mansions, manifest- 
ing His divine presence to every intelligent being in 
the universe in a way that would not have been done 
if it had not been for the divine incarnation. While, 
then, the astronomer claims to have found a central 

13 



194 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

sun for all rolling and shining worlds, we have found 
a central sun in the spirit world, holding, controlling 
and giving life to all ; and, as amid the star spheres 
there may be wandering stars to which are reserved 
"the blackness of darkness," so in the spiritual uni- 
verse there may be those who voluntarily withdraw 
from the divine light, of their own choice, and are lost 
in the abyss of an eternal gloom. Tell me not, then, 
that the mission of Christ is confined to one dark spot 
in the universe, and that all intelligent beings in other 
spheres know nothing of this wondrous manifestation 
of infinite love and goodness — this abounding grace 
to erring mortals — this reaching out of the omnipo- 
tent arm to lift up the lowly and the fallen — this 
bringing home of the prodigal son to join the whole 
family in the blissful triumphs in the higher spheres 
of intelligence. In this divine plan infinite spirit has 
become allied to material nature ; and there is not an 
object on which our eyes fall, or that comes within 
the range of our senses, in which we cannot recognize 
a divine presence and the manifestation of a divine 
power, and our adoring souls may always fall prostrate 
before one ever-present, almighty Being, who governs 
all worlds, and who manifests His presence every- 
where. 



PUNISHMENT. 195 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



PUNISHMENT. 

That there is life in other worlds, we have endeav- 
ored to prove by arguments drawn from the analogies 
of nature and other sources. That life may exist in 
different forms and under different conditions, I have 
also endeavored to prove. That every living soul is 
to have a future existence, we may assume as a fact, 
without an attempt to prove it here. The idea of re- 
wards and punishments in a future state, to be regu- 
lated according to our character and conduct here, is 
interwoven with all the religious creeds of the world. 
Yet the extent and duration of the punishment for 
sins in this life is viewed very differently by the advo- 
cates of the different creeds among heathen and 
Christian nations. Among all idolatrous worshipers 
in pagan lands, as well as among the ancient Jews, 
where the pure precepts of religion had become adul- 
terated, there have often been heavy burdens laid 



196 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

upon men's shoulders, and fearful punishment threat- 
ened to those who refused to bear these burdens. 
We, however, find less said about future punishment 
in our Old Testament scriptures than we do in the 
writings of heathen authors. Most of the promises 
and threatenings contained in the Old Testament had 
reference to this life. Long life and temporal pros- 
perity were the motives by which the Jews were 
urged to a performance of their duties; and when 
any one proved rebellious his life was cut short by the 
hand of the executioner, or by a shower of stones from 
the indignant crowd, without the benefit of the priest 
or clergy. There are many instances recorded of this 
sudden taking-off by the sentence of death for what 
we now would call mere trifling offenses. It is claimed, 
however, that in the New Testament scriptures 
Christ and His apostles clearly taught the doctrine of 
a future conscious suffering of an endless duration. 
The parables of our Lord, taken in a literal sense, 
would naturally convey this idea. But when the lan- 
guage of the New Testament is compared with the 
language of the Old Testament, where only a temporal 
punishment was threatened, clothed in language as 
fearful as the utterances of Christ and His apostles, 
these passages, relied on to prove an eternal state of 
conscious suffering in the sight of the redeemed and 
the saved, lose much of their force and significance. 

Those who undertake to defend the terrible doctrine 
of an eternal hell of suffering, worse than fire, as 
some say, do not, as a general thing, evince that 



PUNISHMENT. 197 

sympathy for human suffering that this doctrine 
should inspire. They speak of those who hold differ- 
ent views as their "opponents," and enter upon the 
discussion of this momentously solemn question as if 
their happiness depended upon proving that a great 
majority of our race would be eternally damned. The 
advocates of this eternal hell fire are, in social life, 
like other men. They enjoy the good things of this 
life, and some of them manifest a comparatively small 
concern about the eternal doom of the millions of our 
race. 

Noah Porter, in his article on Eternal Punishment 
in the March- April number of the North American 
Review, page 356, in speaking of the figurative lan- 
guage employed in the New Testament describing the 
future condition of the wicked, says: "This brings 
up the ethical objections which are urged against the 
terrific sensuous imagery that abounds in the New 
Testament. These delineations, we know, have been 
very generally interpreted in their literal sense, and 
out of them painters and poets and preachers have 
wrought fearful, and even horrible pictures, which 
have either stupefied or bewildered the young and the 
sensitive, and have not unfrequently weakened or 
destroyed the spiritual comfort and effect which 
they were designed to symbolize. Jeremy Taylor 
and Jonathan Edwards are examples of those whose 
genius and piety have not preserved them from grossly 
erring in this fashion. Against the imagery which 
we find in the Scriptures, when taken as imagery, no 



198 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

man, who has a moderate share of historic sense or 
of historic candor, can make any show of objection. 
Many of these images are taken from those agents of 
terror which are familiar to the race — fire, tem- 
pest, darkness, chains of darkness, weeping, wailing, 
etc. Not a few are peculiar to the Hebrew theocracy, 
its history and its prophetic symbolism. They did 
not offend the ethical sense of the men to whom nor 
the times when they were used. 

"They enforced spiritual truth, which is important 
for all times, concerning the issues of another life. 
The Great Teacher and His apostles, who used them, 
are no more responsible for misconceptions of their 
import in this particular than for the countless 
other errors and misconceptions under which Chris- 
tianity itself has been well-nigh materialized and de- 
stroyed. That eternal punishment has been enforced 
by symbols and words which have been unwisely 
and untruly used is no reason for rejecting the 
doctrine, to which every man's conscience assents as 
possibly true. It is not the eternity, but the severity, 
of the punishment which these images illustrate and 
enforce" 

Undoubtedly, thousands have been induced to re- 
ject the sublime truths contained in the Bible from 
a wrong conception of the highly-wrought figures 
with which the prophets and teachers clothed their 
messages. The fault lies not in the ancient methods 
of communicating divine truths, but in the material- 
istic tendency of their interpretations. We could cite 



PUNISHMENT. 199 

many passages from, the Old Testament scriptures 
where this symbolical method was introduced, even 
among those who are regarded very explicit in their 
statements. 

We have a striking example of this in the thirty- 
fourth chapter of Isaiah. In verse 2 we read: "The 
indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and His 
fury upon all their armies ; He hath utterly destroyed 
them, and hath delivered them to the slaughter." 

Now, neither sacred nor profane history gives any 
account that all nations have been utterly destroyed 
and delivered to the slaughter. Again, in verse 3 : 
"Their slain shall be cast out, and the mountains 
shall be melted with their blood." And in verse 4: 
"And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and 
fall down as a leaf falleth off from the vine and as a 
fig from a fig tree." 

No one will claim a literal interpretation of these 
figures, for the people to whom these threatenings 
came then lived in Idumea and Bozrah. 

In the fifth verse the prophet says : " For my 
sword shall be bathed in heaven. Behold, it shall 
come down upon Idumea and upon the people of my 
curse to judgment." Again, verse 6: "The sword 
of the Lord is filled with blood, for the Lord hath a 
sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land 
of Idumea." Verses 9, 10: "And the streams thereof 
shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into 

brimstone,' and the land thereof shall become burning 

7 © 

pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day. The 



200 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

smoke thereof shall go up forever ; from generation to 
generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through 
it forever and ever." 

Here we find language in some respects similar to 
that used in the New Testament, where it is claimed 
that the final doom of the impenitent and wicked is 
described, and yet we know that these threatenings 
uttered by the prophet had reference to a people liv- 
ing in his day, inhabiting a country known to him. 
For this same country — of which he said "the 
streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the 
dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof 
shall become burning pitch ; it shall not be quenched 
night nor day ; the smoke thereof shall go up for- 
ever" — still exists. 

Now, no one, by any legitimate construction of 
the above language, will attempt to prove that the 
description so nearly corresponding with the language 
of the New Testament must have reference to the 
same thing — the future condition of sinners. 

The following context, still referring to the same 
country, says, verse 11 : "But the cormorant and the 
bittern shall possess it, and the owl and the raven 
shall dwell in it." Verse 13, the prophet, still 
speaking of the same country that was to be made 
desolate by war, says: "And thorns shall come up in 
her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses 
thereof, and it shall be a habitation for dragons and 
a court for owls." Verse 14 : " The wild beasts of the 
desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, 



PUNISHMENT. 201 

and the Satyr shall cry to his fellow ; the screech-owl 
also shall rest there, and find for himself a place of 
rest." 

From this description of the desolation that was to 
reign through those dreary regions, from which the in- 
habitants were to be driven by war, and which was to 
become a habitation for the wild beasts above named, 
we clearly see that the threatenings could have no 
reference to a future state of punishment, notwith- 
standing the words, " forever, and forever, and for- 
ever," are used. It would be a singular mixture, if 
we were to take these passages in a literal sense. 
"Pitch on land and in the water," "dust turned to 
brimstone," and "smoke ascending forever," and then 
all these wild animals thrown in, would make a fear- 
ful abode for the finally lost. Many more passages 
could be quoted from the Old Testament, where the 
temporal judgments of the Almighty are set forth in 
those terrible figures, and symbolized by the most 
fearful imagery, which will not admit of a literal 
meaning. I do not wish to intimate that there will 
not be a terrible punishment for all impenitent sin- 
ners in a future state. What the amount and extent 
of that punishment shall be we may well leave to 
Him whose throne is established in judgment and 
justice. 

I am aware that the language of the New Testa- 
ment is fearfully plain in describing the condition of 
the wicked ; but the language of Isaiah and other 
prophets, who were under the same inspiration, is 



202 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

equally plain and fearful, and both do not refer to the 
same state or condition. That we will exist in a 
future state, and have spiritual bodies and means of 
communicating our thoughts one to the other in some 
form of speech, I have no doubt. In these spiritual 
bodies we will be capable of joys beyond our highest 
conceptions in the present state, and our suffering for 
wrongs done in this life will be in accordance with the 
principles of justice and right. But the horrible 
pictures drawn by preachers and religious teachers of 
an eternal hell of fire and brimstone may well be 
doubted. The man whose motives to piety are no 
higher than the fear of an eternal hell of physical 
suffering will pass for what he is worth on the other 
shore. He will be utterly incapable of deriving any 
enjoyment amid the splendors of the eternal mansions 
in the Father's house prepared for the true and faith- 
ful worshiper. There has, of late, been considerable 
excitement produced by sermons preached on this 
subject by some very distinguished ministers, both in 
this country and in England. Among the most noted 
of these is Canon F. W. Farrar, D. D., of England. 
In his sermon on Eternal Punishment he says : 

"I cannot pretend, my brethren, to exhaust in one 
sermon a question on which, as you know, whole vol- 
umes have been written. * * * But one thing I can 
do, which is to tell you plainly what, after years of 
thought on the subject, I believe, and what I know to 
be the belief of multitudes, and of yearly-increasing 
multitudes, of the wisest and most learned in our 



PUNISHMENT. 203 

church. What the popular notion of hell is, you, my 
brethren, are well aware. Many of us were scared 
with it in our childhood. It is, that the moment a 
human being dies, at whatever age, under whatever 
disadvantages, his fate is sealed hopelessly and forever ; 
and that, if he die in unrepented sin, that fate is a 
never-ending agony, amid physical tortures the most 
frightful that can be imagined ; so that, when we think 
of the future of the human race, we must conceive of 
a vast and burning prison in which the lost souls of 
millions writhe and shriek forever, tormented in a 
flame that will never be quenched." 

After some further remarks on this subject, he con- 
tinues : 

" Now, I ask you, my brethren, very solemnly, 
where would be the popular teachings about hell if 
we calmly and deliberately erased from our English 
Bible the three words, 'damnation,' 'hell' and 
'everlasting'? Yet, I say unhesitatingly — I say, 
claiming the fullest right to speak with the authority 
of knowledge — I say, with the calmest and most 
unflinching sense of responsibility — I say, standing 
here, in the sight of God and of my Savior, and, it 
may be, of the angels and spirits of the dead, that 
not one of these words ought to stand any longer in 
our English Bible, and that, being, in our present 
acceptation of them, simply mistranslations, they 
most unquestionably will not stand in the revised 
version of the Bible if the revisers have understood 
their duty." 



204 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

It is supposed by many that the doctrine of end- 
less torments had been modified or altogether aban- 
doned by thoughtful Christians; but the sermons 
against it have called out replies from able men on 
the other side, and among these replies we have a 
sermon in the Complete Preacher, vol. ii., p. 231, by 
Rev. Howard Crosby, D. D., LL. D., Chancellor of 
the University of New York. In his sermon on Fu- 
ture Punishment — "Let them be confounded and 
troubled forever; yea, let them be put to shame and 
perish "* — he says: 

" To perish is to continue forever in the conditions 
just described. The word in the second clause is the 
echo of the word 'forever' in the first clause. The 
two parts answer to one another. 'Let them be con- 
founded and troubled forever ; yea, let them be put to 
shame and perish.' The 'being confounded' and 
' being put to shame ' (as we have seen) are analogous, 
dismay and disgust being the two sides of the same 
wretched, godless experience; and so the 'being 
troubled forever' and the 'perishing' are analogous, 
representing the internal workings of depravity, with 
a pang in every stroke. In vain do some try to ex- 
plain such words as perishing and destruction by an- 
nihilation. The Scripture explains itself. It speaks 
of a torment day and night forever and ever (Rev. xx. 
10), and tells us of those who shall be tormented with 
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels 
and in the presence of the Lamb, the smoke of whose 

* Psalm lxxxiii. 16, 18. 



PUNISHMENT. 205 

torment ascendeth up forever and ever. That this is 
a figure is very evident, but it is equally clear that it 
figuratively pictures to us a punishment that never 
has an end. 

"But, say some, why dwell on such horrid topics? 
Why not preach the love of Christ? We must do 
what God's Word does. We must preach the love of 
Christ, and also show the frightful truth of eternal 
misery. The Gospel is a savor of life, and also a savor 
of death. It saves and it hardens. It takes to heaven 
and it sends to hell. Before the great and awful fact 
of sin it can deal in no compliments and pretty things. 
It is a question of eternal life or eternal death — of 
everlasting joy through Christ or everlasting wretch- 
edness through sin. The Gospel, moreover, warns in 
order to save. 'That man may know that Thou, whose 
name alone is JEHOVAH, art most high over all the 
earth.' These are the words of the text. The word 
of God would have men see the wicked go down to 
doom in order that God's grace may be accepted and 
the wretched procession cease." 

We will give another extract from W. R. Alger's 
Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 509 : 

" When the general idea of a hell has once obtained 
lodgment, it is rapidly nourished, developed and or- 
namented, carried out into particulars by poets, 
rhetoricians and popular teachers, whose fancies are 
stimulated and whose figurative views and pictures act 
and react both upon the sources and the products of 
faith. Representations based only on moral facts, 



206 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

emblems addressing the imagination, after a while are 
received in a literal sense, become physically located 
and clothed with the power of horror. A Hindoo 
poet says : ' The ungrateful shall remain in hell as long 
as the sun hangs in heaven/ An old Jewish rabbi 
says that after the general judgment 'God shall lead 
all the blessed through hell and all the damned through 
paradise, and show to each one the place that was pre- 
pared for him in each region, so that they shall not 
be able to say, " We are not to be blamed or praised; 
for our doom was unalterably fixed beforehand." 
Such utterances are originally moral symbols, not 
dogmatic assertions ; and yet, in a rude age, they very 
easily pass into the popular mind as declaring facts 
literally to be believed. A Talmudic writer says: 
' There are in hell seven abodes, in each abode seven 
thousand caverns, in each cavern seven thousand clefts, 
in each cleft seven thousand scorpions; each scorpion 
has seven limbs, and on each limb are seven thousand 
barrels of gall. There are also in hell seven rivers of 
rankest poison, so deadly that if one touches it he 
bursts.' Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, have given minute 
descriptions of hell and its agonies — descriptions 
which have unquestionably had a tremendous influ- 
ence in cherishing and fashioning the world's faith in 
that awful empire. The poems of Dante, Milton and 
Pollok revel in the most vivid and terrific pictures of 
the infernal kingdom and its imagined horrors; and 
the popular doctrine of future punishment in Christen- 
dom is far more closely conformed to their revelations 



PUNISHMENT. 207 

than to the declarations of the New Testament. The 
English poet's Paradise Lost has undoubtedly exerted 
an influence on the popular faith comparable with that 
of the Genevan theologian's Institutes of the Christian 
Religion. There is a horrid fiction, widely believed 
once by the Jewish rabbins and by the Mohammedans, 
that two gigantic fiends, called the Searchers, as soon 
as a deceased person is buried, make him sit up in the 
grave, examine the moral condition of his soul, and, 
if he is very guilty, beat in his temples with heavy 
iron maces. It is obvious to observe that such con- 
ceptions are purely arbitrary, the work of fancy, not 
based on any intrinsic fitness or probability ; but they 
are received because unthinking ignorance and hungry 
superstition will greedily believe anything they hear. 
Joseph Trapp, an English clergyman, in a long poem, 
thus sets forth the scene of damnation : 

" ' Doom'd to live death and never to expire, 
In floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire 
The damned shall groan — fire of all kinds and forms, 
In rain and hail, in hurricanes and storms, 
Liquid and solid, livid, red and pale, 
A flaming mountain here, and there a flaming vale ; 
The liquid fire makes seas, the solid, shores; 
Arch'd o'er with flames, the horrid concave roars. 
In bubbling eddies rolls the fiery tide, 
And sulphurous surges on each other ride. 
Tae hollow winding vaults, and dens, and caves, 
Bellow like furnaces with flaming waves. 
Pillars of flame in spiral volumes rise, 
Like fiery snakes, and lick the infernal skies. 
Sulphur, the eternal fuel, unconsumed, 
Vomits redounding smoke, thick, unillumined.' " 



208 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

But these horrible paintings of torments and suffer- 
ings are mild compared with those found in some of 
the writings of the ancient heathen authors. Mr. 
Alger says : 

"One who is familiar with the imagery of the 
Buddhist hells will think the pencils of Dante and 
Pollok, of Jeremy Taylor and Jonathan Edwards, were 
dipped in water. There is just as much ground for be- 
lieving the accounts of the former to be true as there is 
for crediting those of the latter; the two are funda- 
mentally the same, and the pagan has earlier posses- 
sion of the field." 

While we may entertain doubts with regard to these 
questions, and view them as hypothetical and not 
clearly revealed in the Bible, we may all be certain 
of one thing: The highest type of true piety, with 
supreme love to the infinite Father and an unwaver- 
ing faith in Christ the Redeemer, and the love of our 
neighbor, which shows itself in deeds of kindness, 
will, in the end, lead us out of suffering and sorrow 
to a higher condition and a sphere of more active ser- 
vice and greater usefulness in the divine family. In 
what part of the vast universe our earth-born race 
will finally find a home no one can tell. Some have 
conjectured that this earth might, in its final change, 
Le our future home. 

The saddest reflection arising out of this whole 
subject of our future life is produced by the stolid 
manner in which this whole question of our future 
condition is viewed and treated. We see the crimi- 



. PUNISHMENT. 209 

nals, in our courts of justice, arraigned "and con- 
demned to years of penal service for a single offense, 
committed under the influence of excited passion, in 
an unguarded moment. Our sympathies are excited 
in their behalf, and we mourn over their sad misfor- 
tunes. But the few years in the penitentiary soon 
pass away, and they are out in the free world again. 
Men have spent fortunes to save a child or a friend 
from the ignominy of a few years' imprisonment; and 
when the hand of the law falls upon its helpless victim, 
years and days and hours are counted with painful 
anxiety for the time to come that shall bring release 
from temporal bondage and suffering; but who shall 
count the ages of eternity that shall bring release to 
the soul banished from the "presence of God and the 
glory of His power," dwelling outside of the divine 
light that guides the erring ones to a better condition ? 
Now, add to this banishment actual physical suffering, 
such as many believe will be the lot of the wicked, 
and what a fearful picture. Tell me, if you can, why 
so many who believe in this physical eternal torment 
are so strangely indifferent to the destiny of their 
friends, and sport away the hours of life in seeking 
their own comfort, and often throwing stumbling 
blocks in the way of anxious, inquiring souls. How 
terrible is the thought of eternal conscious, sensuous 
suffering. 

Prove to me that my child or friend has landed 
where the flames of fire "dash on agony's eternal 
shore," and you drive me to insanity. I must forever 



210 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

forget myself, or become unconscious of my own iden- 
tity, before I could be happy in heaven and know 
my child to be in a hell of sensuous suffering. Outer 
darkness will be bad enough, without the infliction of 
actual torments upon the wanderer from his Father's 
house. I trust that the star of hope will yet arise in 
the great future upon all souls who have strayed away 
from the divine Shepherd's care, and light will come 
to the spirits* in prison, and the long lost will be gath- 
ered into the family of the pure and the holy in an 
eternal union on the shores of an endless life. 



HEAVEN. 211 



CHAPTER XIX. 



HEAVEN. 



How often have we heard those whose lot in this 
life has been hard say, "I shall find rest when I get 
to heaven." Their highest conception of a future 
life appears to be that of quiet repose within some 
inclosure or prescribed bounds, and to engage in per- 
petual songs of praise. Others, again, only think of 
heaven as an escape from punishment, and as a kind 
of recompense for the suffering they endured on earth. 
"I think I ought to get to heaven, after having suf- 
fered so much in this life," is an expression often 
heard from the toiling and suffering thousands of earth. 
I heard a very pious lady once say: "When I get 
to heaven I intend to stay there ; if others wish to 
come back to this earth to visit their friends.they may 
do so, but I have had enough of it." 

The real enjoyment of heaven will not be a nega- 
tive condition — a mere freedom from pain and labor, 
and cares and anxieties of this life. It is a positive 
state, for which every soul must have a fitness, and in 



212 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

which our noblest powers will be employed in active 
service in the different parts of the celestial family. 
The spiritual faculties will be adapted to the employ- 
ment, and this activity, so far from exhausting, will 
increase the powers for a wider range and more ex- 
tensive sphere of service among the dwellers in the 
different mansions in the "Father's house." 

The enjoyment of heaven, then, will depend upon 
our moral relations to the conditions surrounding us. 
If we have the kingdom of heaven within us, we will 
be in harmony with the kingly palaces through which 
the free spirit will move with a perfect delight to obey 
the divine commands. Could a soul with the moral 
stains of a sinful and polluted life be admitted into the 
divine mansions, his want of moral fitness for associ- 
ation with the pure and the holy would be to him a 
source of unutterable anguish. The removal of a 
person wallowing in the filth of a sensual life into the 
royal palace of an earthly monarch could convey to 
us but a very inadequate idea of the unrest of the 
soul ushered into the presence of the pure and the 
holy in spirit life. 

Divine love and divine purity would be to such a 
soul "a consuming fire," and, like Judas of old, he 
would soon gravitate "to his own place." 

Whether, then, w r e view heaven as a place or as a 
condition, there can be no enjoyment without a pre- 
paration for the condition. That there will be what 
to dwellers there would be a real place there can be 
no doubt. And that there will be different spheres, 



HEAVEN. 218 

rising one above the other, is also taught in the Bible. 
These are called "many mansions." And we are told, 
"As one star differeth from another, so are the saints 
in light." The teaching of the Bible is plain and 
definite with regard to a future home for those who 
follow this teaching and become willing subjects 
of the King who rules and reigns in this spirit- 
ual Zion, represented to us under so many beautiful 
types and figures in the New Testament. It is com- 
pared to our habitation here: "And hence," says St. 
Peter, "we, according to His promise, look for new 
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness." — II. Peter, iii. 13. It is also compared 
to " a city which hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God." — Heb. xi. 10. It is also called a 
substance: "Hence," says St. Paul, "ye have in 
heaven a better and enduring substance." — Heb. x. 
34. Our Savior calls it a place : "I go to prepare a 
place for you." — John, xiv. 3. It is also compared to 
an earthly habitation : "We have a building of God, a 
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." — 
II. Cor. iv. 18. "There shall be no night there." — 
Rev. xxii. 5. 

From the above passages of Scripture we learn 
that heaven is a place where there will be associations 
and friendships. It will not be an ethereal condition 
only, somewhere in the regions of indefinable space, 
but a real home, where friends will recognize each 
other, and where there will be progress and improve- 
ment in wisdom and knowledge. We can conceive of 



214 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

no better condition in our earth life than where each 
individual seeks to better the condition of others. The 
teachings of Christ, in His sermon on the mount, 
with its proper interpretations, if carried out in prac- 
tice, would almost turn the disordered conditions of 
society into a paradise ; and can we not suppose that 
in our heavenly home there will be this same spirit 
manifested ? There will be a disposition to encourage 
the feeble, to instruct the ignorant, to cultivate the 
minds of those whose condition in their earth life 
never gave them an opportunity to hear the sublime 
truths so well calculated to lead men out of darkness 
to a pure light, and to a higher degree of knowledge. 
This would be in harmony with the divine plan. Men 
are employed here for the elevation of others ; mis- 
sionaries are sent to heathen lands ; societies are 
formed for works of piety and works of benevolence ; 
angels from higher spheres are sent as messengers to 
minister to those on earth. "Are they not all minis- 
tering spirits?" We may well imagine that there 
will be millions from heathen and pagan lands who 
will need instruction in the divine plan of progression 
from lower to higher conditions. Infants, whose 
minds were not capable of receiving instruction in 
their brief earth life, will receive the necessary in- 
struction there for their mental development and 
advancement to maturity. 

But an objection may be raised here, on the ground 
that Infinite Wisdom and Power can do all these 
things without any intermediate agencies. This same 



HEAVEN. 215 

objection might be made against every humane and 
Christian effort in our present state. Here, we send 
missionaries at great expense, and often at the risk of 
life, to heathen lands, as well as to the destitute around 
us. The objector might say: "If Omnipotent Power 
wishes to help the needy, He can do it without our 
effort." But we know this is not in accordance with 
the divine economy. He commands us to work for 
others, that there may not only be a unity of effort 
among the workers, but that the fact of imparting and 
receiving help may unite all in one common brother- 
hood. The idea of mutual dependence — of receiving 
and giving — runs through all life in its various forms. 
No particle of matter stands independent and alone 
in the material universe. No animal nor vegetable 
life can exist without help or influence from others or 
from the potent forces surrounding it. "No man liv- 
eth to himself." No angelic being can have an inde- 
pendent existence. The happiness of heaven will 
greatly consist in active labors for the good of others. 
The types through which heaven is represented to 
us are all calculated to excite pleasant associations in 
the mind. Among these we have the Eden where 
Adam and Eve commenced the journey of life. Para- 
dise is another type with which we associate everything 
pleasant and delightful. Again, the land of Canaan, 
the most delightful spot to the ancient Jews on this 
green earth ; and in that land was Jerusalem, and on 
one of its highest hills was the temple. This was 
Mount Zion, a name ever dear to the pious Jew, and 



216 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

a place toward which he turned his wishful eyes when 
performing his religious devotions in his captivity in 
strange lands. " The Lord loveth the gates of Zion 
more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things 
are spoken of thee, city of God." — Psalm lxxxvii. 
2, 3. The coming up of the tribes of Israel to worship 
in the temple at Jerusalem was typical of the glorious 
gathering of the redeemed and saved from every land 
as they came with singing unto Zion: "And everlast- 
ing joy shall be upon their head." 

The Holy of Holies in the temple was also a type 
of heaven. It is said that " Christ is not entered into 
the holy place made with hands, which are the figures 
of the true ; but into heaven itself, now to appear in 
the presence of God for us." — Heb. ix. 24. Here 
there may be visible displays of divine light which 
can only flow out to an intelligent universe of created 
beings through the incarnation of the divine Word. 
In that bright world we will have bodies as we have 
here, but they will be spirit bodies, in which we will re- 
tain our sense, reason and memories, only in a higher 
degree than we have them here. Beautiful landscapes, 
flowers of the rarest and richest colors, and scenes of 
surpassing loveliness may greet our improved vision, 

" In that fair land that spreads 
Beneath the slope of the eternal hills, 
Where nothing fades and nothing dies, 
But all is without ending and decay — 
The sky, the sun, the light, 
The peace, the truth, the love, 
And, above all, the joy." 



OUR DEPARTED FRIENDS. 217 



CHAPTER XX. 



DO .OUR DEPARTED FRIENDS RECOGNIZE US i 

The mind almost instinctively delights in calling 
up the scenes of the past. Memory opens her store- 
house to the aged, and takes them by the hand and 
leads them back over the green fields and through the 
pleasant groves where their youthful feet roamed, and 
repeats, in whispering to the inner consciousness, the 
beautiful lessons of love and filial affection that dropped 
from the lips of parents or friends in other days. 

If we do not lose our memories when we depart 
from this life — and reason and revelation teach that 
we do not — then we not only retain a knowledge of 
the past, but we will continue to take a deep interest 
in what is going on among our friends in earth life, 
and if angels and the spirits of our departed friends 
are one and the same class of beings, then we may 
expect that our friends will come to us and accompany 
us amid the joys and sorrows that surround us, and, 



218 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

as ministering spirits, they may have an influence over 
us for good in some way we now, perhaps, cannot un- 
derstand nor appreciate. 

On this subject, I would refer the reader to the able 
sermon on the Ministry of Angels, by Rev. H. W. 
Thomas, D. D., published in an appendix to this 
work. I need not repeat what he has said in language 
better than I could, in presenting this subject. Some 
of the ablest and most eloquent preachers of our day 
believe that angels and the spirits of our departed 
friends are one and the same class of beings. Bishop 
Fallows, of the Reformed Episcopal Church, during 
his ministry in Chicago, preached a very able sermon 
on the cloud of witnesses that surround the Christian 
in " running the race set before him." He maintained 
that angels were "the elder brethren of those who 
join them from this life, and while there might be 
different degrees in knowledge and power, there was 
harmony in their actions, all working together in one 
great harvest-field of love and kindness to our race." 

Rev. Dr. A. E. Kittridge, in a sermon preached on 
the same subject, in this city, is reported, in one of our 
daily papers, to have said: "He believed that the dear 
ones that had gone before were ever around the loved 
ones of earth, like a great cloud of witnesses, and, 
though they are not seen, they doubtless see and keep 
continual watch over us. They are ministering spirits, 
separated only by a narrow stream, and when we come 
to the river's edge we shall see them like a great vision 
of glory. In faith, we see them now. Why, heaven 



OUR DEPARTED FRIENDS. 219 

is so close, that when he, as a pastor, stood by the 
death-beds of others, when the silent shadows were 
stealing over them and shutting out the things of earth, 
they had said, rapturously, that they saw waiting 
angels." 

The following is from a work written by the late 
Rev. D. W. Clark, D. D., one of the bishops of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, and may be considered 
as good authority on this subject: 

" 'But tell us, thou bird of , the solemn strain, 

Can those who have loved forget? 
We call — but they answer not again — 

Do they love, do they love us yet? 
We call them far, through the silent night; 

But they speak not from cave nor hill ; 
We know, we know that their land is brightj 

But say, do they love there still?' 

"We have here an inquiry of touching interest, 
and one that requires to be treated with great delica- 
cy. We have already shown that the righteous dead 
are with Christ. To wish that they were constantly 
with or around us would be as selfish as it is unkind. 
We delight in the society of those nearly allied to us 
on earth — our children — and yet we send them forth 
from us because we know the great ends of our com- 
mon being require it. Heaven we know is the home 
of the angels of God ; but we also know that they go 
forth — nay, even come down to earth as ministering 
spirits. By this means there is a strange, mysterious 
intercourse between the ministering angels and living 



220 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

men. They are not always away from heaven, nor 
would we wish them to be. We would almost fear 
that something earthly and gross might be contracted 
by them, and that even their own joy might be marred 
by their too constant intercourse with sinful and sor- 
rowing beings. We would have them return often to 
heaven, to bathe in its celestial light, to catch anew 
its holy joy, and thus to come back to us again, to 
labor with more ardent zeal for our salvation. So 
should we feel in relation to the dead in Christ — our 
own loved dead! 

" Among those myriads of angelic messengers is it 
not possible that there should sometimes be found one 
who was once an inhabitant of earth? Is it not pos- 
sible that our departed kindred — our parents, our 
companions, our dear children that passed from us in 
the bloom of life, a loved brother or sister — may re- 
visit earth, and come to minister to us in that which 
is holy and good — to breathe around us influences 
that will draw us heavenward ? If it be possible to 
revisit earth, this, no doubt, is the glorious mission on 
which they would desire to come. 

"Is such return to earth possible? One, at least, 
we may claim on Bible authority, has revisited earth, 
if the spirit of Samuel appeared to Saul after the in- 
cantations of the sorceress of Endor. ' Had it been 
satisfactorily known,' says Bishop Burgess, ' through 
any other channel than divine revelation, that Saul 
saw Samuel on the eve of his own fall, and heard his 
words, "To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with 



OUR DEPARTED FRIENDS. 221 

me," it would still have been a fact in the history of 
mankind, and would have proved, as truly as now, the 
possibility of such apparitions. That there was a 
real appearance of Samuel is the plainest interpreta- 
tion of the language, was the belief of the ancient 
Jews, and has been supposed by the best divines. He 
came, not through any power of the sorceress, it 
would seem, but to her utter amazement. Once, 
therefore, a departed spirit has revisited the earth, 
and has been seen and heard ; and it is worthy of re- 
mark that he took the form and aspect in which he 
might be the best recognized.' But whatever question 
or room for doubt there may be in relation to this ap- 
pearance of Samuel, there can be none in relation to 
the return of Moses and Elias, many centuries after 
their removal to the world of spirits. They were seen 
and heard by Peter, James and John upon the Mount 
of Transfiguration. 

" Dr. Adam Clarke expresses it as his opinion that 
spirits from the invisible world, including also human 
spirits which have gone there, may have intercourse 
with this world, and even become visible to mortals. 
They are not brought back into mortal life, but only 
brought within the sphere of visibility. All along 
through the Bible, the thing, at least by implication, 
is again and again recognized. As when Peter, 
miraculously delivered from prison, appeared at the 
gate, the frightened disciples exclaimed, 'It is his 
angel ! ' or when the Savior appeared walking upon 
the water, 'they supposed it had been a spirit.' 



222 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

"We might also cite the universal belief of all ages 
in not only the possible, but the actual occasional re- 
turn of the departed from the spirit world to revisit 
tne earth. 

" Who shall say that there is not, then, a real 
presence of the dead with the living ? Neander speaks 
of a custom among the early Christians of cherishing 
the memory of departed friends by celebrating the 
anniversary of their death in a manner suited to the 
Christian faith and hope. ' It was usual on this day, ' 
says he, Ho partake of the communion under a sense 
of the inseparable fellowship of those who had died in 
the Lord. A gift was laid on the altar in their name, 
as if they were still living members of the family.' 
So also, he says, 'the whole church would celebrate 
the anniversary of those who had died as witnesses of 
the Lord — the holy martyrs; and the communion was 
celebrated in the consciousness of the continued fel- 
lowship with them.' 

" This is a sublime, beautiful idea ! How simple, 
and yet how deep and earnest, the faith of the early 
and holy people of God ! ' The communion of the 
saints,' says Dr. Nevin, 'regards not merely Chris- 
tians on earth, but also the sainted dead ; according 
to the true words of the hymn, " The saints on earth 
and all the dead but one communion make." There 
is a pernicious view in the religious world at the 
present time by which the dead are taken to be so 
dissociated from the living as to have no part further 
in the onward movement of Christ's kingdom.' It 



OUR DEPARTED FRIENDS. 223 

was the impression of Mr. "Wesley concerning Emanuel 
Swedenborg, whom he knew personally, that the strong 
impression on his mind of the presence of deceased 
friends, at particular moments, was produced by their 
actual but invisible presence. Oberlin, also, for many 
years, claimed to enjoy intimate communion with the 
dead. And thousands of Christians have had, at 
times, as clear and overpowering a consciousness of 
the spiritual presence of departed friends as of their 
own self-being. And what is peculiarly to be observed 
is that this communion has been realized only by those 
most spiritual in their nature, and peculiarly allied by 
the power of a living faith to Christ. 

" There is one other fact bearing upon this subject 
which we cannot now forbear. It is the affecting 
recognition of the presence of the dead in Christ, 
which is sometimes realized by the dying saint. Pa- 
rents have recognized departed children as present to 
welcome them, just at the moment of their own de- 
parture ; so have children recognized the presence of 
a sainted father or mother ; also, brothers and sisters 
have thus seemed to meet each other on the dividing 
line between this world and the next." 

Dr. Adam Clarke sums up his belief in the invisi- 
ble world as follows. He says : 

" 1. I believe there is a supernatural and spiritual 
world, in which human spirits, both good and bad, 
live in a state of consciousness. 

"2. I believe there is an invisible world, in which 
various orders — spirits, not human — live and act. 



224 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

" 3. I believe that any of these spirits may, accord- 
ing to the order of God, in the laws of their place of 
residence, have intercourse with this world, and be- 
come visible to mortals." 

It is, however, proper to state here that Dr. Clarke 
speaks in strong terms against incantations and con- 
jurers, just as any right-minded man would speak 
against the pretenders among modern spiritualists, 
claiming at pleasure to calling up departed friends, 
and getting communications from them. Some of the 
most intelligent among the spiritualists themselves 
denounce these traveling, professional mediums as 
dishonest tricksters and frauds, unworthy of the con- 
fidence of any community where they carry on their 
deceptions for the sake of gain. We must, however, 
guard against opposite extremes. While we denounce 
the deceptions of modern spiritualists, we must not 
lose sight of the great truth taught in the Bible and 
believed by Christians and ministers of the Gospel in 
all ages of the Christian world, that there is a great 
spiritual world all around us, and only invisible to us 
because our material organs of vision are not adapted 
to such existences. There are many instances re- 
corded in the Scriptures where the eyes of individuals 
were opened to see the spirits around them. There is 
an interesting instance of this kind recorded in II. 
Kings, vi. 17. When the king of Syria made war 
against Israel, and came by night and encompassed 
the city of the Israelites, and when the servant 
of the prophet Elisha saw their perilous situation, 



OUR DEPARTED FRIENDS. 225 

he said: "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" 
"And Elisha prayed, and said : Lord, I pray Thee, 
open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord 
opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw ; 
and behold, the mountain was full of horses and 
chariots of fire round about Elisha." 

Dr. Adam Clarke, the learned Methodist commen- 
tator, says on this verse: u Where is heaven? Is it 
not above, beneath, around us ? And were our eyes 
opened as were those of the prophet's servant we 
should see the heavenly host in all directions. The 
horses and chariots of fire were there before the eyes 
of Elisha's servant were opened." 

The Scripture account is so full and explicit in ref- 
erence to the intercourse of angels and our departed 
spirit friends, and our recognition of them in our 
spiritual home, that we need not multiply argument 
on this subject. We may assume it as an established 
fact, so clearly revealed in the Bible, that to deny the 
intercourse of angels and the spirits of the departed 
with those now living on the earth would be to reject 
the plain teachings of the Scriptures. That they will 
appear to us in bodily form, so as to be recognized by 
us, we infer from the appearance of Samuel to Saul, 
and Moses and Elias on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
They had not then their resurrection bodies, for no 
one had risen from the grave before Christ arose and 
became the first fruits of them that slept. If those 
who reappeared on earth assumed such forms as to be 
recognized by men living in the body, may we not 

15 



226 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

infer that this is a general law of our spiritual exist- 
ence, and that in heaven we will readily recognize our 
loved ones with whom we lived on earth? Infants 
may have advanced to higher condition. The aged 
and infirm may wear the bloom of youth. Yet, by 
our superior knowledge in that bright world, we will 
know the dear ones who are waiting for us on the 
other shore. I would again refer the reader to the 
able sermon by Dr. Thomas, on this subject, in the 
Appendix. 



APPENDIX 

TO 

LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



APPENDIX. 229 



APPENDIX 



The following sermons were delivered by Rev. Dr. 
Thomas, in the pulpit of Centenary Methodist church : 

LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence 01 
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. — Luke, 
xv. 10. 

In geometry, we are told that a circle is a curved 
line, every part of which is equally distant from a 
point called the center, or words to that effect. Let 
us each one imagine ourselves as standing at this cen- 
tral point, and looking outward. And then let us 
imagine that this line gradually recedes, or moves 
away, thus enlarging the inclosed space. And then 
let us imagine that this line disappears, or is wholly 
removed, so that we stand at a point that is not 



230 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

bounded at all, and from which we can look or move 
in every direction without limit ; and could we move 
with any conceivable velocity forever, we should never 
reach a limit; and in some such way we can form 
some idea of what we call space. That illustration I 
heard in the school-room more than twenty years ago, 
and it has been a seed thought bearing fruit ever 
since ; not in measuring the earth or calculating forms 
and distances, for I have done very little in that direc- 
tion ; but it set me upon a method of study and observa- 
tion, that of standing at a point and looking outward. 
And then a little later, when the first book of mental 
science came into my hands, I got the first impres- 
sion — and most vivid it was — that each one is a little 
world in himself, a world of sense or feeling, and of 
thought; and that the world within each one answers 
to the world without. That, too, was a seed thought 
and has been bearing fruit. And then, standing in 
this center and studying a little further, I came upon 
the statement, or fact, that what we call our conscious- 
ness, or inward sense, or knowledge of things, is 
double, and corresponds to this fact of a world within 
and a world without. The books call this the con- 
sciousness of self, and not self; that is, the knowledge 
that we are, and the knowledge of something besides 
ourselves. And this, too, has been a seed thought. 
Indeed, they are points, or centers, or facts, from 
which none of us ever can get away ; nor need we 
want to leave them, or lose sight of them, for all 
knowledge, all that is knowable or unknowable, 



APPENDIX. 231 

thinkable or unthinkable, is either within ourselves 
or without ourselves ; is either part of ourselves or not 
part of ourselves ; and hence all study, all knowledge 
must be within one or the other or both of these fields. 
With this broad analysis or generalization we can 
easily classify the mental movements of ourselves or 
of mankind. If we move outside of ourselves we 
encounter material things, as earth, air, water, fire, 
light, heat, electricity and the phenomena of life, and 
hence we have our studies in geography and chemis- 
try and zoology, and when we pass on to the stars we 
have our astronomy. These we say are physical 
studies, or the studies of physical things; then, when 
we turn in the other direction, or look within, we en- 
counter mind, and this we call metaphysics, or that 
which is beyond the physical. Here we observe the 
phenomena of mind in learning and remembering, 
and of reason and imagination. And here, also, we 
discover conscience, and affection, and reverence, 
and all the moral powers. And when we turn with- 
out again, and pursue the upward way of metaphysics 
and morals, we come to theology, or the doctrine of 
God. 

Our text lies, as we shall see, in both these fields 
of thought. It touches the inner and the outer 
world ; it penetrates the realms of both matter and 
spirit, and of both the good and the -bad. 

Let us each one, then, stand at the point, in the 
vast circle of things, of our individual being, and 
from this center journey outward. In doing this, let 



232 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

us remember that the outward world corresponds to 
the world within, and is knowable to us only because 
of the one answering to the other. Had we not eyes 
we could have no knowledge of light. Had we not 
within the sense of hearing, and taste, and smell, and 
feeling, we could have no idea of such things as 
sound, or of sweet and bitter, or of odors, or of hard- 
ness or softness, in the outside world. Had we not 
each one the sense of truth, or right, or love, or duty, 
within, we could have no idea of these things or qual- 
ities or facts, without. And let us premise this other 
fact, that when any sense or capacity is found within 
it would Seem that there should be that which an- 
swers to it without ; and that starting outward each 
faculty of sense, or mind, or spirit, finds that which 
corresponds to itself. 

Starting, each one, then, from our own little cen- 
ter, what do we perceive ? We meet first, the things 
of sense ; the things that meet the eye, the ear, the 
taste, the touch. We are thus put in communication 
or conscious relations with the world of matter. We 
are also made conscious of the presence of each other, 
and of the facts of truth and moral relations of right 
and wrong, and there comes to us some sense at least 
of the .future and of God. In all this, let us suppose, 
as must indeed be the fact, that our circle is at first 
very small, or its boundary line very near us. At 
first we know but a very little of matter, of its nature, 
or its properties, or its extent. We know very few 
people. We know very little of truth, or right, or 



APPENDIX. 233 

love, or justice, or of the relations of society. We 
know almost nothing of the future, or of God. 
But as we stand and look, or as we move outward, 
the circle expands or enlarges, and slowly there 
comes to us a sense of the vastness or the magnitude 
of things. 

The little circle at first is so small that it holds 
only ourselves and the members of our own family. 
Ours is the only house, ours the only people ; and the 
yard and the garden and the spring are the only 
world of which we know; and the trees in the yard 
are our forests, and the sky is the covering just over 
our heads, and rests down on the field or meadow just 
beyond, and the sun comes up and goes down beneath 
this arching roof. But as we journey outward we 
perceive that the spring flows into the river, and the 
river to the ocean. We find that beyond the garden 
is the meadow, and beyond this the field, and beyond 
this the woodland, and beyond this another farm. We 
find that beyond the little hill is the valley, and be- 
yond the broad plain is the high mountain, and be- 
yond our own ocean-bound shores there are still other 
continents. The trees that grew near our home are 
not alone, but spread out into vast forests. Not only 
is the earth continuous beneath our feet, not only do 
the streams flow onward, but the roads on which we 
first placed our feet reach outward, and the people, 
counted at first by our own family, spread out into 
neighborhoods, and villages, and cities, and states, 
and great nationalities, till the world that was once so 



234 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

small is now large and covered over with human be- 
ings like ourselves. But when one circle has enlarged 
to take in something of our own world, we have only 
taken a single step forward, have only begun to look. 
The earth that at first was so small, and then grew 
to be so large, now becomes very small again as our 
circle enlarges and takes in Mars, and Jupiter, and 
Saturn, and Uranus, and Neptune ; takes in the sun ; 
takes in all the stars of heaven, and all the countless 
millions of suns and systems that spread out in the 
infinite depths beyond. Thus the magnitude of things 
dawns upon us, and we stand with reverence and 
amazement, not in the presence of one little world, 
but of a universe. 

Coming back again to our little circle, and moving 
outward, we are impressed with the unity of things. 
There is, of course, a vast diversity, but running 
through all this diversity we perceive a unity of plan, 
and design, and movement. The earth is one. The 
rocks are one. Air is one. Water is one. Light is 
one. Life is one. Growth is one. Death is one. 
There is a plan, an order, in the vegetable kingdom 
and in the animal kingdom. And not only in these 
things, but in ourselves and our kind there is a unity. 
Everywhere man must eat and sleep, and labor and 
rest. Everywhere he must have some form of speech 
or language. Everywhere he has some idea of num- 
bers and distance, if it be no more than to count his 
fingers, or to reckon distance by a day's journey. 
Everywhere he has some idea of beauty, some sense 



APPENDIX. 235 

of truth and justice. Everywhere he laughs and 
weeps and loves. Everywhere he is born and dies. 
Everywhere he has some thought of God and the fu- 
ture. When we look out upon the world in this way 
we feel that it is one. There is always something, 
however strange the land or language, or people or 
scenery, that gives us some feeling of familiarity, of 
likeness to home. We find the same sunlight and air; 
and however different the birds, or beasts, or moun- 
tains, or trees, there will be something that we have 
seen before. And when we study the worlds lying out 
beyond us, and when the telescope and the spectro- 
scope tell us that they have night and day, and sum- 
mer and winter, and air and water, and soil and 
scenery, and the chemical elements that go to make 
up our world ; and when we know that we are all held 
by the one power of gravity and all must move in 
obedience to the law of matter; when we study these 
things, the great truth dawns upon us that our world 
is a part of one great system, that the universe is one, 
and that over all there is one living God. 

Now let us come back again to our starting point. 
And standing in our little circle, we find that we are 
not only ourselves alive, but that we are surrounded 
by living things. We may not be able to tell what 
life in its last analysis is, but still we observe it as a 
fact ; and we perceive, further, that it exists under 
various forms and types and in an ascending scale — 
all the way from the simplest ferns up to the most 
perfect flowers and trees — and from the radiata and 



236 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

mollusk up to man. And we observe, further, that 
the conditions for all these forms of life are present in 
the earth and air and water and chemical agencies. 
And in studying these things we are impressed with 
the fact that the final cause, or that for which all these 
conditions exist, is that life, or living things, may 
exist. The one answers to the other; and we find 
that life is everywhere — spreads out all over our 
world. Now, when we extend our circle till it takes 
in other worlds than our own, takes in our solar sys- 
tem, and the millions of other worlds and systems of 
worlds scattered throughout space ; and when we re- 
flect that these other worlds, so far as we know, are 
on the same general plan of our world — have land 
and water and air and light — and when we reflect 
that our world is a part of this general system of 
worlds, that all are under the same general laws, we 
find it most reasonable to suppose that the final cause 
for which they exist is not different from the final 
cause in ours ; and hence, as life is the final cause 
here it must be there, and hence that there must be 
life in other worlds. And as we find that life here 
looks to and culminates in man, and as our world is 
one of the least of worlds, we may suppose that other 
worlds have some form of life not less glorious than 
that of man here. And hence, as the circle enlarges, 
we find ourselves standing not only in the presence 
of a vast universe, but in the presence of a uni- 
verse filled with life, and filled with rational beings 
like ourselves, and possibly far transcending us in 



APPENDIX. 237 

knowledge and power and goodness. That must, 
indeed, be a very narrow view — a view in which the 
circle of vision has not expanded far from the cradle 
and the walks of childhood — that would limit life 
and intelligence to this one little world. What a stu- 
pendous stretch of egotism in the poet, who, in writing 
of our little world, that is less than a sand on the sea 
shore, would say : 

We for whom all nature stands, 
And stars their courses move ! 

That might have done for the days of the old geo- 
centric theory, when it was supposed that our earth 
was the center and that the sun moved around it daily, 
and that the stars were mere gems to adorn the near 
firmament at night. 

Let us now come back again, and from our little 
circle study another fact. We find here that what we 
call truth and goodness are everywhere the same ; that 
is, as facts they are the same, and all under the same 
general laws. Our understanding of them may not 
be the same, and hence there may be differences oi 
opinion ; but when the final facts are reached we all 
agree. There is only one moral law in our world. 
All the religions of our world agree that truth and 
justice and love and reciprocity and purity are right. 
And as the various religions and nationalities and 
governments come more and more to see this, they 
will cease to be wandering comets and will take their 
places in the orderly heavens of moral law and love 



238 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

and brotherhood. Now, as there is one universe and 
one living God, and one system of natural laws, and 
one system of truth and moral law here, we are safe 
in assuming that there is one system of moral law 
in all worlds. That law, in its last analysis, is 
the law of love. It is, figuratively speaking, to 
the moral world what the law of gravity is to the 
natural world. 

Thus far we have journeyed mainly by observation, 
induction and analogy, as illumined by the rational 
faculty or by reason. And into what a vast outlook 
have we been lead ! How has the circle been enlarged 
and lifted up beyond the low, narrow horizon where 
we first stood ! The mind is overwhelmed with won- 
der and amazement, and filled with mingled emotions 
of awe and reverence and fear and hope as it stands 
and looks out upon such a scene. 

Now, in the light of these things, let us come to 
the more special study of the text. It needs some 
such background of observation, some such prepara- 
tion in thought, before the mind can begin to take in 
the grandeur and sweep of its declarations. 

And here we can journey no longer by the light of 
reason alone. Reason does, indeed, give us a stand- 
ing, a place from which to look, and by all her facts 
and inductions and analogies creates a presumption, 
an impression, in favor of some such immense truth 
as the one here proclaimed. But if we had nothing 
more than analogy, nothing more than an impression, 
however powerful that might be, we should still be left 



APPENDIX. 239 

in uncertainty ; we should be like Columbus before he 
had found the new world. He had every reason to 
believe that there was another continent, and that 
there would be some form of life and beings there ; 
but the ocean lay between him and that undiscovered 
shore. And so with us. We have all the probabili- 
ties; but we want the facts also. And here let us 
bring out, not only the inner sense of reason, but that 
of spirit also ; that which perceives the divine, that 
which reaches out for God. And here, were we so 
disposed, we might well reason from analogy that, as 
every other inner sense finds some answering fact on 
the outside, so we might expect that the sense of the 
divine within us, the intuition of the divine, would 
not in its reaching out be disappointed, but would find 
that for which it was made and that to which it natu- 
rally aspires — it would find God. And here this 
sense of the divine stands, along with reason, out on 
the borders of spirit life, and here the shores of upper 
worlds come into view, and here the divine meets us, 
and here the life of the happy dwellers in those realms 
is discovered. 

First, there stands before us Jesus Christ. Imman- 
uel — God with us. God manifested in the flesh. In 
Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead. He was 
the express image of the Father, the brightness of His 
glory. Before Him were gathered a company of sin- 
ners — men who had missed their way, were wander- 
ing in the dark, were lost. Of all the chapters in the 
New Testament this is the sinner's chapter. Hence 



240 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

it is mine, and it is yours. Before the Savior were 
gathered these lost ones, and He began to talk to them 
of the "lost piece of silver" and of "the lost sheep" 
and of the "prodigal son." Oh! what a scene is 
this! The loves and feelings and cares that move 
our poor hearts down here are kindred to the love and 
emotions that fill and move the divine nature. The 
love that leads the shepherd to go into the mountains 
to find his sheep ; the love that leads a father to look 
out into the distance to see afar his returning child; 
the love that rushes out to meet him, the love that 
takes the son to the father's arms, that forgives his 
wandering and sinning, and welcomes him home with 
music and feasting and joy; the love that puts new 
garments in the place of rags; that love filled and 
moved the heart of God for the sinful and fallen, the 
lost, the wandering of our earth, and He must find a 
way to reach us. Jesus Christ was that way, and 
here He stands as God revealed to us, and telling us 
that we are not forgotten, not forsaken — that there is 
One who loves us, and One who came to save us. 
This is not a presumption. It is a fact. "It is a 
faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that 
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." 
And being a fact, the fact of a divine life, the life of 
God, after which the soul cries, is confirmed. 

Take another truth disclosed here. It is that 
"there is joy in the presence of the angels of God 
over one sinner that repenteth." This fact confirms 
the fact that from reason we were quite ready to 



APPENDIX. 241 

believe, namely, that there is life and intelligence in 
other worlds. But it does more than this, and what 
is of vastly more interest to us. It teaches not only 
that there are intelligent beings in other worlds, but 
that they have knowledge of what is transpiring in 
our world, and that they are deeply interested in our 
welfare, and rejoice when we turn from sin to right- 
eousness. Standing in our little circle, this, too, does 
not seem unreasonable, for we have means here of 
knowing the affairs of distant portions of our country, 
and even of the lands across the sea. Morse set the 
lightning to carry our news. Daguerre caught the 
sunlight, and made it paint our pictures. And now 
comes Edison with his simple phonograph that catches 
and preserves the very tones of the human voice, so 
that the world may hear the living words of an orator 
long after his lips are still in death. And we may 
easily reason that the higher intelligence of other 
worlds may have means of communication wholly un- 
known to us. Analogy might teach us also that, as 
nations share something of a common interest and 
sympathy in our world, these bonds of friendship 
would be found in all worlds, and possibly reaching 
out from one world to another ; all this we might look 
upon as possible and probable, but without the Bible, 
or some direct personal experience, we could not know 
it as a fact. Jesus Christ affirms the fact. He who 
came out from the invisible tells of life in other 
spheres, and that all those happy beings bend over 
our world and watch our steps with a deep and tender 

16 



242 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

interest. Oh, what a revelation, what a fact is this r 
to know that we are in a universe of life, and that 
through all worlds there run the same common laws 
of truth and righteousness and sympathy ! And with 
what profound interest should the dwellers of our 
world heed these great truths. How it should thrill 
our hearts to know that angels attend our way and 
rejoice when we turn from sin to holiness. We dwell 
in so much darkness that we see not the perils of sin 
or the rewards of righteousness as they are seen from 
beyond. The angels know the night, the gloom, the 
suffering that must ever be along the path of sin, and 
they rejoice when the sinner turns from the downward 
way. They know the rewards of righteousness, and 
they rejoice when sinners turn to God. They watch 
the mother as she watches her child, and they rejoice 
with the father when the prodigal comes home. They 
are not far from every minister, every teacher, every 
one who ministers to the poor or visits the stranger 
or watches by the sick. How these thoughts should 
cheer us on in our work for humanity. And, oh ! if 
there be a wanderer here, a lost one here, or a wan- 
derer or a lost one among the many thousands to 
whom these words shall go, if you have no permanent 
rest, no abiding place, no living hope, be persuaded to 
turn away from sin, to give up your wanderings and 
come home to your Father's house. Be encouraged 
to turn, for there is mercy, there is help. None of 
us shall ever know how deep were the waters, nor 
how dark was the night that the Lord went through 



APPENDIX. 243 

that the lost might be found. Be warned to turn, for 
there is, there can be, no rest or joy in a life of sin. 
It may be that the angel first to rejoice over your 
resolve may be a mother, or some loved one in the 
spirit life. It may be that even in heaven the hearts 
of loved ones are sad because you will not turn. A 
life of righteousness will bring joy to yourself, joy to 
the angels of God, and joy for evermore. 



244 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS. 

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister 
for them who shall be heirs of salvation ? — Heb. i. 14. 

Some one made the laying of the Atlantic cable the 
subject of a curious or imaginative speculation as to 
what effect it produced upon the fish in the sea. It 
does not require the help of imagination to suppose 
that the millions of inhabitants down in that deep wa- 
tery world should observe so striking an event as the 
stretching of a long, dark cable from one side to the 
other of their broad domains. But there is room for 
the widest play of imagination as to what impression 
the cable made upon the fish ; what explanation, if 
any, they sought to give of its presence, or purpose, 
or use. As they gathered about it, and saw it sink- 
ing down to the bottom of their world, some may have 
imagined it an omen of evil, or that it was some 
strange monster or serpent coming to make war. 
Others may have thought it unworthy of note and 
gone on with their work or play. The older and the 
wiser ones may have brought to the strange phenom- 
enon what of tradition, or science, or philosophy, if 
any, that they have down in that world ; and possibly 



APPENDIX. 245 

some one, the shark or the whale, who sport upon the 
surface, may have suggested that there was an order 
of beings dwelling up in the air and out on the land, 
and whose ships they had often seen sailing above them, 
and that possibly this strange appearance or visitor in 
some way belonged to them. We can hardly imagine 
that the oldest or wisest of the fishes ever dreamed of 
the uses to which we put such a thing in our world; 
and much less that they could by any possibility im- 
agine even the subtle force that played within that 
dark coil of wire. 

We dwell at the bottom of a vast ocean of air. We 
live in this air as the fishes do in the sea; our ocean 
is larger and deeper than theirs ; it extends all around 
our earth, and is some forty miles deep ; and down at 
the bottom of this we come and go, labor and rest 
live and die. And it is no burlesque on man to say 
that the fishes in the sea can hardly know less of their 
world than man once knew of his world. He once 
thought it was flat and that the sun passed round it 
every twenty-four hours. He was once alarmed by an 
eclipse, and terrified by shooting meteors, thinking 
that they were falling stars. The uncivilized races 
are yet in the bondage of night and fear, and have no 
knowledge of any other world than this ; and to them 
a camera or a railroad or a phonograph would be 
almost as great a mystery as was the Ion cableg to the 
fish in the sea. And from all this it is evident that 
whether we be here as the slow and far-off result of 
evolution, or of a nearer specific act of creation, it is 



246 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

certain that we are creatures of growth and education. 
We have to learn to see and to hear and to feel. We 
have to learn to talk and to think and to . reason. 
And so of conscience and affection and volition; they 
have to be developed. And being thus finite and 
limited in our being, and dwelling as we do in bodies 
of clay, it is further evident that the limit of our 
senses, and even of our mental and moral perceptions, 
is not to be taken as by any means the limit of things. 
There may be, and very probably are, many proper- 
ties of nature for which we have no corresponding 
sense, and of which we are, and consequently must be, 
wholly ignorant, just as we could have no knowledge 
of light without the power of seeing. And then this 
we know, that the senses and faculties we have can 
come to their highest uses and results only by educa- 
tion; and that, in the absence of this, whole worlds 
of near and easy truth have lain undiscovered and 
unknown all along the pathway of man, simply for 
want of education and such supplemental aids as edu- 
cation could bring. Thus it has been of all the dis- 
coveries and inventions and truths and principles of 
our race. The facts and the possibilities were in the 
world all the time ; they awaited only the seeing eye, 
the hearing ear, the reasoning mind, or the feeling 
heart. 

And hence, it is at no time safe to say we have 
reached the limits ; that there is nothing beyond. We 
are not to make ourselves^ and especially what little 
we know, the measure of things. The uneducated ear 



APPENDIX. 247 

must not be the limit nor the standard of music. The 
uneducated person must not be the limit nor the stand- 
ard of thought. The eye that has never looked through 
a telescope must not set bounds to the astronomer's 
vision as he gazes at the milky way. The conscience 
and the heart that have never been opened to the 
higher and better influences must not be the limit of 
duty or love. And even if man is not in a position, 
for want of knowledge or sufficient evidence, to affirm 
that there is something more and higher than what he 
at any time knows or believes, he certainly is not in a 
position to deny that there may be more. There is 
always a beyond that he has not reached, and an un- 
known that he has not explored. And all the proba- 
bilities and analogies point in one direction, and that 
of more to learn and more to know and do. We are 
only of yesterday. We have scarcely opened our eyes 
upon the wonders of creation. Like little children, 
we have scarcely come to form any conception of the 
vast system of things all about us, and reaching out 
above us and beyond us. Some such reflections as 
we have suggested seem necessary to prepare the mind 
for the higher study of the ministry of angels. It is 
one of those higher themes that cannot be approached 
or realized without reflection. One cannot enter such 
a field by a single step, any more than he can compre- 
hend law or music or mathematics without thought. 

Let us first study the subject, then, in the light of 
such general facts and analogies and impressions and 
experiences as may tend to render such a doctrine not 



248 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

only possible but probable, and then we may be the 
better prepared to understand and accept the Bible 
doctrine. 

Let us first recall the general facts or conclusions 
reached in the reflections of last Sabbath upon Life in 
Other Worlds, namely : That our world is a part of a 
vast universe or system of worlds, all created by one 
living God and ruled by the same natural laws; that 
as life and intelligence and morality are the final cause 
of this world, the same may be supposed to be the 
final cause in other worlds, and hence there is life 
in the other worlds, and hence, also, intelligence 
and morality; and as truth and morality are every- 
where the same in this world, and, so far as we can 
see, must be the same in all places, there is only one 
moral law and one moral universe. Such a conception 
is, to say the least, not unreasonable. Indeed, it is 
rendered not only highly probable, but almost certain, 
by the laws of analogy. Its bearing on the subject 
now under consideration will readily be seen. 

Let us now reflect, further, upon the nature of the 
life in other worlds, and especially upon the fact that 
innumerable lives have, for thousands of years, been 
passing away from our world. From general analo- 
gies, we are quite safe in assuming that there is and 
must be a general likeness. in all intelligent and moral 
beings — that they must all, somehow, be in the image 
of God. And we have every reason to believe that 
what we call death makes no change in the nature and 
feelings of the souls that pass away from the present 



APPENDIX. 249 

state. They have thought and memory and affection 
there, just as they had them here. This reflection o\. ens 
up a doorway of nearness to the life in other worlds 
that we could not .otherwise have ; and it invests that 
life with all the tenderness and interest that made the 
departed dear to our world before they passed away. 
When we pause and think of the other life in this light 
it does not seem far away, nor do the inhabitants seem 
strangers to us. How many of them once lived down 
here as we do now ! All the names that have made 
bright the pages of earth's history, or literature, or 
religion — names that our world will never let die — 
are somewhere over there. Socrates and Seneca and 
Aurelius ; Abraham and Isaac and Jacob ; Paul and 
John and Luther ; La Fayette and Washington and 
Lincoln, are over in that life. The great musicians 
are there; the singers are there ; the poets are there; 
the orators are there; the statesmen are there; the 
philanthropists are there ; the martyrs to truth and 
liberty are there; those who passed through much 
suffering and trial here are there ; our fathers and 
mothers are there; our brothers and sisters are there; 
and, oh, what an innumerable company of sweet chil- 
dren are there! And it cannot be that those who 
have gone from our world can forget the scenes they 
left behind. Plato has not forgotten Greece; Solomon 
has not forgotten Jerusalem ; Paul has not forgotten 
Rome; Napoleon has not forgotten France ; Washing- 
ton has not forgotten America ; Prince Albert has not 
forgotten his loved Victoria; and, oh, the millions of 



250 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

fathers and mothers in that land have not forgotten 
the world where they first loved and wedded, and the 
homes where they lived and died ; and the children 
over there have not forgotten the parlors and gardens 
and groves where they played, nor do they forget the 
parents that go to weep at their graves, and kiss their 
pictures, and put away the little garments they once 
wore, as all that is left them now. 

Let us consider, also, another fact. It is, that man 
is the helper of man in this world. It is only by as- 
sociation that man can rise out of barbarism, or accu- 
mulate wealth, or achieve any great work. This is 
not only so in material things; it is a fact also in the 
world of mind. One mind must lean upon another 
for sympathy and encouragement ; and one must look 
to another for instruction in language, or music, or 
medicine. And this is especially the case in spiritual 
things. Man cannot, even in religion, well walk alone. 
He is dependent upon the great laws of sympathy 
and helpfulness from others. We naturally look to 
others for help in faith and experience and patience 
and charity. It is certainly a fact, here in this world, 
that there is a communion of spirit in friendship and 
intelligence and faith and prayer and sympathy and 
love. It is not bodily presence alone that we feel in 
communion one with another here ; it is a spiritual 
communion as well — mind meeting mind and heart 
meeting heart. 

Let us reflect, again, that the life of other worlds 
may vastly transcend the life of this world. There 



APPENDIX. 251 

may be, and I suppose are, orders of beings with 
endowments above mankind ; and then we must sup- 
pose that there has been a growth, an increase of 
power in those who have gone out from our world. It 
is not to be supposed that Calvin and Wesley and Swe- 
denborg are on the same plane of wisdom and power 
that they were when they left this world. And so of 
all others. And we may not be able to conceive what 
a hundred, or five hundred, or five thousand years 
may have done for souls in the other life. And if the 
analogies of this life are worth anything in such rea- 
sonings, we must suppose that all the souls gone out 
from our world, and thus growing, must not only 
have increased powers for usefulness, but, along with 
the increase of power, an increase of desire and dis- 
position as well. This was the case in the earth life 
of all great and good men. Washington never loved 
his country so well as in his " Farewell Address ;" and 
Wesley never felt so deep an interest in Methodism 
as he did when the time drew near that he must leave 
its cares and management to others ; and Jesus gave 
His most tender words of solicitude for His mother 
and disciples when the hour of separation came. 
And all who have witnessed the death of parents 
know with what inexpressible tenderness they turn to 
their children. Certainly, death makes no change in 
these 'feelings, that grow stronger as the natural cur- 
rents of life run lower and lower, and are strongest 
of all at the very last. 

Let us take still another fact : There is, I think, 



252 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

with all, or nearly all persons, a certain conscious- 
ness — dim it may be — of a higher or deeper sense, 
by which they sometimes come into communion with 
spiritual things. I do not mean alone, nor mainly, 
now, that communion of the heart by which God is 
perceived; but a consciousness of some spiritual pres- 
ence about us. It may be of a child, or a companion, 
or a friend in the spirit life ; or it may be of some 
less definite and yet perceived presence or power that 
is felt to be near. And often in such moments the 
mind finds light and strength, and the heart finds rest 
and peace. Often sudden impressions of duty or 
warnings of danger come to the mind, seemingly with- 
out any earthly cause. And then closely related to 
these are the phenomena of dreams, and clairvoy- 
ance, and apparitions, and death-bed scenes, that seem 
to reveal the presence of a kind of border-land, where 
the forces and forms usually concealed from the 
senses in their ordinary moods may, and do, make 
themselves known in moments of crisis or of great 
need. 

Now, I submit that all these things taken together, 
make out a strong presumptive case in favor of the 
fact that there would be some communication between 
worlds, and an angelic ministry over mankind in this 
world. 

There are only three arguments of which I now 
think that might be, or usually are, brought against 
the doctrine. The first is, that if angels and the de- 
parted were permitted to know of the sorrows and 



APPENDIX. 253 

wants of this world it would cau=e sorrow in heaven. 
And this is the most pitiful and selfish of all arguments 
that can be offered. It is so near akin to the old selfish 
idea that the redeemed in heaven would find reason 
of increased happiness by looking down at the lost in 
hell, that I have no patience even in stating it. It is 
pure selfishness. It is a libel — a slander on both hu- 
man nature and religion. Think of a mother reaching 
a point in any world when she would not be willing to 
know the sorrow of her child, lest it should mar her 
own sense of happiness. What a conception of piety 
and heaven is this ! Why, unless heaven destroys 
every good and tender emotion, there could be no 
greater misery than to be denied the privilege of 
knowing a child's wants or suffering, and no greater 
joy than to lay down any harp of heaven and rush to 
any hovel of earth to soothe its tears or stand by its 
death-bed. Those who, after reflection, hold this 
selfish view of heaven, have yet to learn the very first 
principles of the sympathy of Jesus Christ and of the 
life of the angels. The highest joy of heaven must 
ever be in the greatest heroism and the sublimest and 
deepest sacrifice to save others. Since Jesus Christ 
became poor, became an outcast, suffered shame and 
death on the cross, all the angels of God and all the 
redeemed gladly go to any mountain or wilderness or 
garden of sorrow to find the lost or comfort those who 
weep. It may be argued, again, that such a ministry is 
not possible. Such an argument must assume two 
things: First, that we do not know of any means by 



254 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

which it is possible; and second, therefore there are no 
such means. But neither of these propositions will 
hold good. We do know that minds read and influence 
each other while in the body. We do know that we 
have means of talking to each other across the deep 
sea. We know that the laws of nature, as gravity 
and magnetism, act and interact throughout the uni- 
verse. And by analogy we should infer that the laws 
of spirit are not less efficient. But the second objec- 
tion is even less tenable. To say that, if there were 
means of such communication or ministration, we 
should know of those means, is neither more nor less 
than to say that we know all that is; which is in 
effect to make our knowledge the limit of the possible; 
that is to say, that what we do not know cannot be. 
It should be remembered here, also, that the question 
is not our ministering to the angels, but their minis- 
tering to us. We, in our houses of clay, and with 
our dull, heavy, earthly senses, may see, and, indeed, 
may have, no way by which we may reach out and 
take hold of angel life; but they, coming to us 
from above, may have a thousand ways of taking 
hold of us. We may not see them nor hear them, and 
yet they may be, and I suppose they are, near us, and 
all about us, and see us and hear us all the time. We 
are apt to think of angel life as far away, somewhere 
up among the stars, when, in fact, it is, probably, 
all about us, and what we call distance is possibly no 
more obstruction to angelical ministrations than it 
is an obstruction to thought with us; and it is just as 



APPENDIX. 255 

easy for us to project our thoughts to the sun, or to 
the Pleiades, as it is to think of an object a mile away. 
It is probable that no greater surprise awaits us a 
moment beyond death than to find that heaven and 
angel life are everywhere, and during our life-time 
were all about us, though we saw them not. Little 
did the wisest fishes down in the deep sea even 
dream of the wonders of the telegraph and of the 
great upper world above them ; and it hath not en- 
tered into the heart of man to conceive the things 
that God hath prepared for them that love Him. 

The last argument against angelic ministrations 
that we notice is the assertion that there is no such 
supermundane ministry in the affairs of our world. 
That, again, is to assume that if there were such min- 
istrations we should see it, or feel it, or know it. And 
that in effect, again, is to limit the actual, or that 
which is, by our own knowledge. But how many 
other facts and possibilities were long in our world 
before mankind knew them. The earth turned on its 
axis, and swept round the sun in its orbit for thou- 
sands of years, and man knew nothing of it. The 
blood circulated in their very bodies, and they knew 
not the true theory. The possibilities of steam and 
electricity were all about them, but they knew them 
not. And then, as a matter of experience, or per- 
sonal knowledge, the limitations of one must not be 
the limitations of all. Because I could not construct 
a sidereal chronometer, that is no reason why Dr. 
Swazey should not do it. Because all the men in the 



256 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

world never constructed a phonograph, that does not 
take away the fact that Mr. Edison has constructed 
one. Because one man cannot appreciate the beau- 
ties of art or the higher harmonies of music, that is 
no reason that others may not have this knowledge. 
Job may have been the only man in all Chaldea with 
vision clear enough to read God's providence in afflic- 
tion, or to say, "I know that my redeemer liveth," 
but they were none the less facts to him. There are 
many in this audience who walk from day to day in the 
sweet assurance that they are the children of God, 
and the fact that others may not have this experience 
does not destroy the testimony of those who have it. 
And there are many who walk the earth with the sa- 
cred consciousness that their spirit friends are often 
very near them. It is a fact to them, and this fact is 
not taken away because Dr. Hammond and the ma- 
terialists say there is no soul in man. No one is com- 
petent to deny either the immortality of the soul or 
the ministration of angels. The probabilities are all 
on the other side. The probabilities all are that the 
soul lives after death, and that loved ones, as well as 
the higher angels of God, do come back and journey 
by our side. And I think the deeper consciousness 
of most good and thoughtful souls is often not without 
some assurance of such presence and influence. 

The Bible is full of such doctrine, and I had 
thought to bring it out at more length than time will 
now permit. The text says : "Are they not all min- 
istering spirits, sent forth to minister for those who 



APPENDIX. ' 257 

shall be heirs of salvation?" That is, it directly af- 
firms, by the idiom of the original language, that they 
are ministering spirits, and are sent forth to minister 
for those who shall be the heirs of salvation. In the 
Old Testament times such ministration was common, 
so common as not to occasion surprise, and was easily 
believed by all. In those days of simple trust God 
was near, heaven was near, and the angels walked 
and talked with men and women ; met them by the 
way, came to them at their tent doors, "or in the wil- 
derness ; came to them in dreams and visions, and 
talked with them face to face. Thus they came to 
Abraham and Lot, to Daniel and Ezekiel. And when 
we come to the New Testament and the life of Christ 
the whole scene is radiant with angelic presence and 
light. They speak to Zachariah and Elizabeth, and 
to Joseph and Mary. They attend in a grand over- 
ture the birth of our Lord, and the whole heavens are 
filled with the music of their sweet voices, and the 
Judean skies echo back the glad chorus of " Glory to 
-God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will 
to man." The angels were with our Lord in His 
temptation, in His baptism, and attended His whole 
ministry, and in solid columns or legions were wit- 
nesses to the scene of His death. They attended 
Paul and Peter ; they opened the iron gates of the 
prison, that Peter might go free. 

The Scriptures make it plain that these ministering 
angels have often been human beings who had lived 
and died in this world. They are often spoken of as 

17 



258 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

men, and often appeared in the form of men, and 
talked as men. In some instances their identity even 
is put beyond all doubt. Thus it was in the case of 
Moses and Elias, who appeared on the Mount of 
Transfiguration ; and thus we read in the book of Reve- 
lation that when John would have worshiped the angel 
who spoke to him, the angel said, " See thou do it 
not; for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren 
the prophets; worship God." And thus we have 
opened up to our view the sublime thought of a uni- 
verse or life — life in other worlds, and lives who have 
gone out from our world — and all as the angels or 
the messengers of God, sent forth to do His will. We 
have opened up in this way a most impressive view of 
the method of the divine government as carried on 
through the ministrations of angels. They are His 
messengers, flying through the heavens, charged with 
messages of love or mercy, or justice or judgment. 
They hover over the shock of battle scenes, and are 
present in the storm where sailors toil with the 
angry sea; they walk, unperceived, our crowded 
streets, ready to shield from danger or to comfort in 
sorrow. There is not a sick bed, nor a death-bed, 
whether it be of man or child, or in palace or hovel, 
or out in the desert wild, but the angels of God are 
there. It has long been the cherished faith of many — 
and it is my belief — that each soul, that all souls, 
have guardian angels — bands of angels — who attend 
them through all their journey here below. Oh, what 
an upper-world of life and light and joy and minis- 



APPENDIX. 259 

trations is just above us and all about us, could our 
blind eyes and heavy ears but see their bright forms 
and hear their sweet voices. And in that happy 
throng are fathers and mothers watching their chil- 
dren, and children who often come back and walk by 
our side, but our dull eyes see them not. Alas, these 
spring days are sad to you and to me and to thou- 
sands of homes because our children are not with us 
to see the bursting buds and opening flowers, to run to 
meet us when weary and tired we come home at the close 
of the day. But, oh, for them the sweeter spring time 
the land where the flowers never fade. I expect, 
has come, and soon, very soon, we shall see them in 
when my work is done and the hour has come to die — 
not to die, thank God, but to live — I expect then, 
as the scenes of earth fade away, that the loved ones 
will stand all about me, ready to take me by the hand 
and bear to me their happy home. And loved ones 
will meet you, and you, and soon shall we all be with 
that great company of redeemed spirits who are near 
the throne, and go forth to do the will of God, to visit 
the needy and gather in the wanderers from all lands. 



260 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



MATTER AND SPIRIT. 

Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the 
flesh.— Gal. v. 16. 

In the light of these words we are in the presence 
of two worlds — in the world of matter and the world 
of spirit. And in the light of this teaching we find 
our lives cast into the domain of both ; that is, we are 
ourselves both matter and spirit, and are thus related 
to each of those worlds. 

There are probably no two words in the language 
that contain so large a meaning, or in human thought 
stand for so much, as the words matter and spirit. 
Were I asked to give the two words that, of all others, 
contain the most, I should say "matter and spirit." 
They each label a whole world. They are gateways 
to all we know. They stand for all that is. Over all 
the organic substances of our world, as stone or iron, 
or earth or air, or fire and water, write the one word 
matter. Over the organic forms or substances, as 
plants and animals and man, place the label matter. 
Over the imponderable elements, as light, heat and 



APPENDIX. 261 

electricity, place the word matter. Over the kingdom 
of vegetable and animal life, pronounce again the 
word matter. Write this word on the whole solar 
system ; write it on Sirius and Orion and the Plei- 
ades ; write it on the milky-way ; write it on all the 
stars that shine in the heavens. Take the word spirit, 
and in its lower sense as covering mind, write it over 
thought, and reason, and memory, and will, and im- 
agination. And then, as you rise higher, write it 
over love and conscience. And then, let it include 
the world of departed souls, and the world of angels ; 
let it rise up and find its highest meaning in the nature 
of God, and you have measured something of its vast 
depth. 

Midway between these two kingdoms or worlds, 
and sharing the nature of both, stands man. First 
above inorganic matter come the lower and then the 
higher forms of vegetable life ; then come the lower 
and higher forms of animal life, rising all the way 
from the radiate and the mollusk to the lower and then 
the higher vertebrates, and finally reaching its perfec- 
tion and beauty in the erect form and finer and more 
expressive features of man. Man is closely related 
to the world of matter. His body is composed of 
matter — is made of the very same things that go to 
make up the plants and trees and animals all about 
him. But in man matter is carried up to a higher 
plane and related to a higher reasoning power and to 
that which is divine. And from this higher plane 
man can look down upon all the forms of matter and 



262 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

life below him. He can see the dull clod, the cold 
clay, the lifeless stone or iron. He can see the living 
but unconscious fern in the glen or moss upon the 
rock. He can see the rose or the tree rooted in the 
ground, unable to move from place to place, but send- 
ing down their roots into the soil, and reaching out 
petal and leaf to the sunshine and the air. He can 
see moving, feeling, instinctive life in the worm or the 
insect, or in the sparrow that builds its nest under 
the eaves of his own roof, or in the patient horse, or 
the faithful dog. All these breathe the same air that 
man breathes and live upon the same food; they have 
a keen instinct and a measure of mind and affection ; 
but they are unable to accompany man in his higher 
world. They know not his skill in kindling a fire 
or cooking food or inventing an engine. They can- 
not go with man in his study of mathematics or 
chemistry or philosophy. They establish no courts 
of justice ; they write out no codes of law ; they 
build no temples of worship. We are taught that all 
these lower forms of life are for the higher being — 
man. And standing on this higher plane, man's life 
opens out to higher truths, and to spirituality, and to 
the pure and the good, and to God. Thus, man is 
the connecting link in the long and ascending scale 
of creation, and unites in himself both the lower and 
the higher — the world of matter and the world of 
spirit. 

As these two terms, matter and spirit, bind up so 
much meaning, as their contents are so large, it is 



APPENDIX. 263 

not strange that nearly all the controversies and the 
opposing schools of thought among men have started 
from and gathered around one or the other or both 
of the worlds for which they stand. 

There is first the extreme materialistic school, that 
sees only matter and admits only matter, and under 
matter and in matter classifies and finds the solution 
of all things. With this school all the phenomena of 
life and thought and conscience are referred to matter. 
Matter and force are sufficient to account for every- 
thing. Mind is only a higher form of matter, or a 
result of matter. Thought is the result of molecular 
changes in the brain. The brain secretes thought as 
the liver secretes bile. This system, of course, denies 
the existence of mind or spirit as being anything dif- 
ferent from or independent of matter. It places all 
knowledge in sensation, or in the things learned 
through the senses. It denies all intuitive percep- 
tions of truth, and affirms that man knows nothing, 
and can know nothing, except what at first comes to 
him from the outside world. This system makes right 
and wrong depend wholly on utility, and utility is to 
be judged by the greater or less amount of pleasure or 
pain attending any action. In a word, will it pay ? 
The authority of conscience is set aside, and duty and 
right are mere matters of commerce. This school 
denies, or at least cannot affirm, the soul's immortality. 
Mind and thought are called into being by the organi- 
zation of matter, and they perish with the dissolution 
of matter. What has existed here as a force may in 



264 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

some form continue to exist, for nothing is destroyed; 
but all thought or hope of immortality, in the sense of 
a continued personal existence, or personal identity as 
man now exists, is abandoned. This system goes 
further, and denies the existence of God. It admits 
the system of nature as it has been in the past, and 
will be in the future ; affirms the eternity of matter, 
and maintains that all things exist by their own na- 
ture or by necessity; but it denies the existence of a 
living God, or of any intelligence or power above 
matter, or that has not been produced by matter. 
And hence, of course, it must deny also everything 
that is called supernatural. 

The materialistic school received its greatest im- 
pulse in modern times ; first from Lord Bacon, and 
then from Locke, in England, and Condillac in France. 
Before the days of Bacon men had thought largely 
from within, and had dwelt mainly upon the laws and 
forms of thought. Bacon started the world upon the 
path of observation — set the minds of men to travel- 
ing outward. This called attention away from the 
mind itself, and fixed it upon the instruments of the 
mind, or upon the senses. Then Locke wrote his 
celebrated work on the understanding, advocating the 
doctrine that all knowledge came primarily through 
the senses. The same view was maintained by Con- 
dillac in France, and by Hartley and Hobbs and other 
able writers both in England and on the Continent. 
In still more recent times the same views substan- 
tially have been maintained by many of the ablest 



APPENDIX. 265 

minds in both England and Germany, including such 
names as Carl Voght, Hachel, Huxley, Maudsley, 
Bain, and Dr. Hammond, of this country. It would 
not be fair to charge all these great names with hold- 
ing to all the consequences that I think logically flow 
from the doctrine of materialism, for they do net, or 
at least they do not avow them. The wonderful de- 
velopment of the physical sciences in modern times 
has also given a great impulse to materialism. Under 
the telescope and the spectroscope the known domain 
of matter has been greatly enlarged ; the study of the 
laws of nature has enlarged the domain of law, so that 
many things that were once thought to belong to the 
supernatural are now found to be ruled by simple and 
natural laws, and thus both from the physical and the 
metaphysical stand-point the tendency is to deny the 
existence of spirit, and to put nature and law in the 
place of the living God. 

In both the natural and the spiritual the constitu- 
tion of things seems to be self-regulating or self-cor- 
recting. The remedy follows along after the disease ; 
slowly it may be, or even in the form of one extreme 
coming in to counteract another. It was so in this 
case. The thinkers in staid and moral England 
foresaw the consequences of the sensual philosophy, 
and halted in their march ; impetuous France received 
the doctrine gladly, and rushed wildly on over the 
precipice, denying the Bible and the existence of God 
and the immortality of the soul, and enthroning a nude 
harlot in the name of reason. In the midst of the 



266 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

anarchy and confusion, Robespierre and the leaders 
of society were glad to have the assembly reaffirm 
these doctrines as a basis of restraint and moral 
rule; and in the world of thought the reaction came 
along in the form of an extreme idealism over against 
an extreme materialism. The materialists had affirmed 
that the source of all knowledge was in the senses ; 
that the mind knew nothing except what it learned 
through the senses, or by experience. Locke, and 
indeed all the philosophers before him, had taken 
the ground also that the mind does not know things 
outside of itself, but is conscious of or knows only its 
own ideas or sensations. Here, Bishop Berkeley, who 
saw the sad results of materialistic philosophy, saw 
also its weak point, and his place of attack. Accept- 
ing the current teaching that the mind learns only 
through sensation and experience, and that it knows 
not the outside world, but only its own impressions of 
the outside world, he simply denied that there was 
anything beyond these impressions; that is, denied 
that there was any outside world at all, anything 
beyond the sensations or impressions in the mind. 
Thus, one school denies mind, and the other denies 
matter. Then, to complete the strange scene, David 
Hume took the same philosophies, and argued that if 
the mind did not know material things, but knew 
only its own impressions of them — did not know that 
there was really any material basis for these impres- 
sions — how could it know that there was anything 
more than impressions; that is, how could it know 



APPENDIX. 267 

that there was such a thing as mind at all ? And thus 
the thinking world was on the verge of universal 
skepticism ; on the verge of denying everything — de- 
nying both matter and mind. And there seemed no 
escape. And with the accepted philosophy of the time, 
there was no escape. Nor was Hume to blame. He 
created no system ; he simply took the philosophy of 
his time and carried it out to its logical result. 

Here the tendency in the constitution of things to 
right themselves again appeared, and between these 
two extremes arose the common-sense philosophy of 
Reid and Stewart and Hamilton, that affirms the ex- 
istence of mind as an entity, a something that has its 
own laws and principles ; affirms also the fact of mat- 
ter, and of our immediate perception of the world and 
of material things ; and, with the philosophy of Cousin 
and McCosh, affirms also man's perception and intui- 
tion of spiritual truth and right and of God. 

But it must still be confessed that the materialistic 
philosophy is not only alive, but vigorous, and rapidly 
increasing both in Europe and in our own country. 
And I am free to confess that I regard it as altogether 
the most dangerous and difficult enemy that confronts 
the Christian world in our time. Dangerous, because 
when pressed to its last results it undermines, or at 
least weakens, the foundations of morality, and de- 
stroys the sharp, clear distinctions between right and 
wrong. Dangerous, because it denies immortality and 
final responsibility to God — denies at the last that 
there is a God. It robs the world of conscience and 



268 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

duty and hope. It takes away the thought of a Uni- 
versal Intelligence, and in return gives us only un- 
conscious nature. Dangerous, because, if admitted, 
everything supernatural or divine in the Bible, or 
Providence, or religion, or even in man, is a delusion, 
and must be given up. 

I think it is plain to be seen that here is to be the 
great battle-field of thought. Is there a spirit in 
man ? Is he anything more than a collection of ma- 
terial substances ? Is there a living God ? These are 
the real, the vital questions that are rapidly coming 
into the foreground in our times, and that this gener- 
ation must meet, and beside which all our smaller de- 
bates are almost as nothing. The question to be met 
is not as to what the soul is, or how to save it, or what 
God is, but the deeper question, Has man a soul at 
all, and is there a God? 

Having indicated the great field of coming conflict, 
I cannot, of course, enter into the debate at this time 
beyond a few suggestions. And the first is, that the 
same tendency that we have observed in the constitu- 
tion of things, and especially in the human mind, to 
be self-regulating, or to find a proper equilibrium, will 
continue in the future as in the past. 

Let us notice some of the forces that are working 
and will continue to work in this conflict. One that 
I may mention in the line of contrast and coincidence 
is, that along with the marvelous and almost bewilder- 
ing revelations of science in the material world has 
come the almost equally singular phenomenon of mod- 



APPENDIX. 269 

ern Spiritualism. While science is almost literally 
over-shadowing and burying the world in matter, and 
the thought of the spiritual and the supernatural is 
being crowded back, up springs this strange phenom- 
enon, with its rappings and writings and voices and 
visions, and fills the popular mind with the thought of 
spirit and the continued life of the soul after death. 
Now, suppose that we admit that a large part of 
these phenomena are unreal, are trickery or supersti- 
tions — and this I am disposed to believe — yet there 
remains this fact, that they have called attention, in 
this crude way, to spirit life, and forced many minds 
to think upon it. And there is another fact : There 
must be in the mind of man some powerful basis of 
belief in spirit life on which, if all this be a fraud or 
superstition, it can rest, or find even a temporary 
lodgment. Thus the world has these two strange 
spectacles — an overshadowing materialism, and con- 
fronting it a gross Spiritualism. Personally, I know 
very little of these professed physical manifestations. 
Some I have found to be false, and all may be for 
aught I know; but this I do believe, that out of this 
grosser thing, so often used to deceive, or rather be- 
yond this, is to arise, and is even now arising in the 
minds of thousands of the purest and best people, 
what I may call a sense of the immanence of the Di- 
vine, and the conscious nearness of angelic ministra- 
tions, and of departed loved ones, before which all the 
arguments of materialism fall helpless and harmless 
to the ground. Even if you admit in argument with 



270 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

Dr. Hammond — which of course I do not — that they 
are all simply nervous impressions, or sensorial delu- 
sions, there is no way in the realm of philosophy to 
prove them to be such, or to disprove their reality. If 
you attempt to prove their delusiveness on the ground 
of the sensational and representative philosophy, that 
man knows only through the senses, and knows not 
things in themselves, but only his mental states, or 
the impressions of things, then may Berkeley's ideal- 
ism deny the fact not only of angels and spirits, but 
also of the material world, and you have no adequate 
answer ; and Hume, on the same line, may deny that 
there is any substratum of mind in which the impres- 
sions adhere, and you are powerless to answer him, 
and the darkness of Nihilism is all that is left. If 
you accept the realistic philosophy, that mind is a 
fact, and that it immediately perceives things outside 
of itself, then the consciousness of the mind in divine 
and spiritual things is to be accepted just as implic- 
itly as it is in things material. And these things of 
which I am now speaking are on a plane immensely 
above the grosser forms of Spiritualism. They do 
not depend upon a dark room, or a medium, but upon 
a devout, receptive and illuminative spirit within 
each one, a heart that is open to these divine and an- 
gelic impressions and ministrations, and that need not 
go to "this mount, nor yet to Jerusalem," to find 
them, but, walking in the spirit and living in the 
spirit, walks with God and with His holy angels. 
This is not a new thing in the world. It is rather a 



APPENDIX. 271 

return to the faith and sweet experiences of patri- 
archal and apostolic days ; a faith and experience 
from which, alas, materialism has driven very many 
in our days only too far. 

Another fact to be noted is the tendency in the 
nature of man to resist any highly extreme and too 
long continued bias. The individual life, or the life 
of a whole people, may be carried too far in any di- 
rection, and may so remain for years, or in nations 
even for generations, but it will swing back. This 
was the case in the dark ages, when spirit and faith 
were everything, and superstition reigned almost su- 
preme, and the knowledge of nature was almost 
wholly ignored. And from this extreme there had to 
be a reaction. The reason of man could not always 
sleep. Liberty to think could not be always withheld. 
The facts of nature needed to be understood. Man 
could not advance while in ignorance or the neglect 
of the material world of which he was a part. "When 
the reaction came it was powerful. The fields of 
physical science opened out into a boundless realm of 
beauty and fascination. What was once so small as 
hardly to be seen, now spread out and became so large 
as to shut out the vision of everything else. And 
when men found that God was not sitting just up 
above the floor of the sky — found there was no floor — 
and when they found that in dissecting the human 
body they found only a nervous system, but no visible 
mind or spirit, it is not strange that the first impulse 
was to say that God is nowhere, and that man is 



272 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

nothing but earth or clay. We are now going in the 
direction of that far-off extreme of materialism which 
denies spirit and God, and seeks to find everything in 
matter. But the spiritual part of man will not be 
content to look only downward, to look only to the 
dust. It will cry out for its own upper life and com- 
panionship in the laws of morality and in fellowship 
with the divine. And it may be that our world shall 
have to go into the bondage of materialism to learn 
more of the great world of matter ; but when it comes 
back to rebuild its wasted and neglected temples of 
the spirit and of God, it will in the long ages be wiser 
and stronger for what it has learned. The thought of 
God and of spirit and of immortality will be all the 
greater and dearer because seen through the light 01 
a whole universe of material worlds. 

Then another fact in this great debate must be the 
presence of life and intelligence in our world. The 
facts are not questioned. How shall we account for 
them ? Does matter as known to us answer the ques- 
tion? Does it bridge the way from the inanimate clod 
to the rose, and from inanimate dust to the thought 
of Shakespeare or the piety of Fenelon? What is it 
that takes the very same elements and gives to one 
the form of an oak and to another the form of a pine, 
makes of one an insect or an animal and of another a 
man, and goes on reproducing these forms? Mr. 
Tyndall has declared against the doctrine of sponta- 
neous generation, and when he looks out upon such a 
spring-time as this he is ready to say that there must 



APPENDIX. 273 

be some one back of all this scene of life that knows 
more about it than he. Does matter explain life and 
thought and love and devotion and prayer and hope ? 
These things are all here. They are facts. If mat- 
ter produced life and thought in our world, who knows 
what it may not have produced in other worlds ; and 
who can say that it has not evolved a God, who has 
turned around and reshaped matter, leaving on every 
leaf and star the evidence of a designing mind back 
of their present existence. What I am contending 
for is the fact that life and beauty and thought and 
love do exist, and as such must be recognized; and 
they call for a higher explanation than simple matter, 
as we know it, can give. And these thoughts must 
weigh mightily in this contest. When men have found 
out by physiology how the blood circulates and how 
the brain is affected in thought, and by astronomy 
how the stars are held in their places, there is still 
back of all these things the power and the intelligence 
by which these things are done; that power, men will 
call God. 

One more fact I mention as coming into this debate 
over matter and spirit. It is the fact of the presence 
and influence of the Holy Spirit in human hearts. 
Not only do men perceive a controlling power in na- 
ture about them ; not only is there a book called holy 
and that speaks of God ; there is a divine power that 
reaches human hearts. There is a conscience within 
that will not sleep, nor will it give the wicked rest. 
Jesus Christ said: "And I, if I be lifted up, will 

18 



274 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

draw all men unto me." There is a living power in 
religion that must always be its own divinest evidence. 
These Easter flowers point back to history, and that 
history may be well certified in fact ; but men do not 
get their strongest convictions by going back and 
studying that evidence. Had religion no other power 
it had long since died. Had the resurrection of 
Christ no other attestation it had been forgotten long 
ago. The crowning evidence of Christianity is the 
gift of the Holy Ghost; not alone on the day of 
Pentecost, but as a living, witnessing power in the 
heart of man. And this power, too, I believe, will 
increase in the world, and that will herald the day of 
the immanence of a divine spirit, and of the nearness 
of the spirit world. We are in the days of the dis- 
pensation of the spirit, and its abundant outpouring 
draws nigh. 

We should all heed this injunction to "walk in 
the spirit." This is given as the safeguard against 
"fulfilling the lusts of the flesh." And surely such 
caution and strength are needed in these days when so 
many all about us, and even in the highest places, are 
falling. If man's life tend downward, he is ruled by 
the flesh ; and if he live to the flesh, with the flesh, he 
must die. I think very much of the sad immortality 
of our times has its unperceived root in an insiduous 
and growing materialism, that weakens conscience 
and the sense of duty, and puts life down on the 
low plane of mere animal enjoyment. Men are only 
strong in the light of a quickened conscience, and of 



APPENDIX. 275 

the divine law, and of responsibility to God, and in 
the light of eternity. Down in the flesh alone man 
is an animal. Up in the spirit he is divine, and be- 
fore him opens the vision of God and of the spirit 
world. Walk, then, in the spirit, in the divine life, 
in prayer and trust and love, and all deeds of useful- 
ness, and you shall live above the sins of the flesh, 
and reach the rest that remains for the pure in heart. 



276 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 



VIEWS OF DISTINGUISHED AUTHORS. 

In a work entitled The Final Philosophy, page 
328, we find the following statements, in reference to 
the opinions of some of the most distinguished philos- 
ophers of modern times: "Devout astronomers, such 
as Huygens and Newton, so far from treating the idea 
of inhabited worlds with the levity of Fontanelle, 
thought it consonent with the Scriptures, even if not 
especially revealed. In later times, the Herschels and 
Argo have agreed with Bode in peopling the sun with 
the children of light, sheltered behind his luminous 
corona, as within the very glory of the Almighty; 
and orthodox divines have sought a direct correspond- 
ence between the astronomical and biblical realm of 
intelligence. 

"Dr. Tholuck could fancy the redeemed finding a 
congenial abode in the fair savannahs of Venus or 
the bright plains of Mars, while the lost were con- 
signed to the dreary wastes of Jupiter or the dismal 
craters of the moon. 



APPENDIX. 277 

"Dr. Thomas Dick made his 'Christian Philoso- 
pher ' speculate on the magnificent scenery of Saturn 
with his belted skies, Jupiter with his procession of 
moons, and the fixed stars with their dazzling suns, as 
seats of life and intelligence, adorned by the Creator 
for the worshiping hosts of heaven. 

"Eloquent preachers, descanting upon the fancy of 
Bradley and Madler, have supposed the central sun 
may be .the royal seat and court of the great Creator 
and Governor of worlds, around whom adoring suns 
and planets revolve as tributary provinces in obedient 
loyalty and praise. 

"Professor Lange, uniting the speculations of Her- 
schel with the revelations of St. John in his Land 
of Grlory, hailed the innumerable orbs beyond our 
solar system as the many mansions of our Father's 
house, the New Jerusalem above, where they need 
no light of the sun nor of the moon, the very heaven 
of heavens and holy of holies, into which Christ 
hath triumphantly entered. And Dr. Kurtz, in his 
Bible and Astronomy, rising to a still higher flight, 
has claimed the fixed stars, with their luminous, refined 
structure, as abodes of those pure angels who can 
know neither birth nor death, and who stand nearest 
the throne of glory as the eldest children of the Cre- 
ator, when the foundations of the earth were laid, 
when the morning stars sang together, and 'all the 
sons of God shouted for joy.' " 

Notwithstanding the general diffusion of knowl- 
edge has greatly changed the opinions of men in 



278 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. 

reference to the location of heaven above the crystal 
sphere, Christians still cherish a hope of finding a 
local habitation into which they will finally enter, and 
with pious emotions and ardent hopes sing with the 
pious Doddridge: 

"Ye stars are but the shining dust 
Of my divine abode — 
The pavement of those heavenly courts 
Where I shall see my God." 



Before the discovery of modern astronomy, our 
knowledge of space terminated with the range of our 
vision, and the bright stars that adorn our nightly 
heavens were viewed as insignificant points of light 
just a little way above our earth ; and the sublime 
passages from the Bible in reference to a plurality of 
worlds were passed over as something beyond the 
comprehension of mortals in their present state. As 
the light under the Gospel dispensation broke down 
the barriers and national lines that existed between 
Jews and Gentiles, and opened the gates of a new 
spiritual kingdom to all willing souls, so has the tele- 
scope brushed away the mists of error from the sidereal 
heavens and revealed millions of shining orbs that 
now shed a new light on the utterances of the proph- 
ets and many other inspired writers who spoke of 
other worlds than ours. Now, since men can look at 
a universe of worlds in the depths of space, instead 
of making a universe out of one small world, the 



APPENDIX. 279 

sublime passages we have noticed in the preceding 
chapters have an additional interest for the Christian 
as well as for the astronomer. 

To the soul struggling through these dark years, 
mingled with sorrows and joys, hoping for immortal- 
ity, and expecting to find a final home in the deathless 
land, the language of Bonar is interesting, when he 
says: 

" I gaze upon yon everlasting arch, 

Up which the bright stars wander as they shine, 
And as I mark them in their nightly march 
I think how soon that journey shall be mine. 

" Not many more of life's slow-pacing hours, 
Shaded with Sorrow's melancholy hue ; 
Oh, what a glad ascending shall be ours ! 
Oh, what a pathway up yon starry blue I " 



INDEX 



Chapter I. 



PAGE. 

The Origin, Progress and Perpetuation of Life, . . 5 

Chapter II. 
Paradise, the Home 01 Our Ancestors, ... 14 

Chapter III. 
Cosmos and the Bible in Harmony, .... 23 

Chapter IV. 
The Various Conditions of Life in Our World, . 33 

Chapter V. 
The Vastness of the Universal Empire where Life 

may Exist, 37 

Chapter VI. 
Different Views of Solar Light and Heat, . . 52 

Chapter VII. 
Solar Light and Heat the Source of all Vitalizing 

Energies under the Control of Nature's Laws, . 76 

Chapter VIII. 
Distribution of Solar Heat to the Planets, . . 83 

Chapter IX. 
Analogies in Nature, .90 

Chapter X. 
Earth Compared with Other Planets, ... 101 



282 index. 

Chapter XI. PAGE 

The Cosmography of the Ancients, .... 113 

Chapter XII. 
Legendary Worlds of the Dark Ages, . . . 124 

Chapter XIII. 
The Universal Struggle for Life, 137 

Chapter XIV. 
The Way to Life Open for All, .... 150 

Chapter XV. 
The Bible Teachings on the Subject, .... 163 

Chapter XVI. 
Miscellaneous Thoughts, 171 

Chapter XVII. 
Religious Aspect of the Subject, . . . . . 184 

Chapter XVIII. 
Punishment, 195 

Chapter XIX. 
Heaven, 211 

Chapter XX. 
Do Our Departed Friends Recognize Us ? . . . 217 

Appendix. 

Life in Other Worlds, 229 

Sermon by Rev. H. W. Thomas, D. D. 

The Ministry of Angels, 244 

Sermon by Rev. H. W. Thomas, D. D. 

Matter and Spirit, 260 

Sermon by Rev. H. W. Thomas, D. D. 

Views by Distinguished Authors, .... 276 




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